Racism, Prejudice and Stereotype Comparison Between Film "Crash" and "So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans"
Natashia Waramit
Arts & Cultural Diversity
November 14, 2012
Cultural Project #2
The 2004, Paul Haggis film Crash and Jimmy Santiago Baca’s sort reading, “So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans” surprisingly have many connections on racism, prejudice and stereotypes given the length of the excerpt and the details of the movie. The multiple correlations are easily identifiable within specific scenes and a few lines from the reading. These correlations include ties between all race relationships. The movie Crash contains the stories of several different groups of people of all sorts of races. Their individual lives are played into one another through links of racism and social stereotypes of each ethnicity. As the thirty-six hour period progresses, the intertwining of the individuals and their partners eventually crash together, and they all become part of a single storyline that tells the tale of how racism exists no matter who you are. The short excerpt “So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans” by Jimmy Santiago Baca talks about the impression of Mexicans stealing jobs from rightful American workers. He uses descriptive words to show the intensity of his feelings towards the assumptions made about Mexicans. In the movie Crash, there is a part where John Ryan, a clearly racist cop, interacting with Shaniqua, who holds a superior position in an insurance company. The dispute happens when she denies his insurance to help his father who is clearly in pain, because of the unnecessary and racist comments he made to her. One including that she was not “qualified” to be in her position of higher power due to the color of her skin. This can compare to lines 25-29 in Baca’s writing, “I see small white farmers selling out to clean-suited famers living in New York, who’ve never been on a farm, don’t know the look of a hoof or the smell of a woman’s body bending all day
Arts & Cultural Diversity
November 14, 2012
Cultural Project #2
The 2004, Paul Haggis film Crash and Jimmy Santiago Baca’s sort reading, “So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans” surprisingly have many connections on racism, prejudice and stereotypes given the length of the excerpt and the details of the movie. The multiple correlations are easily identifiable within specific scenes and a few lines from the reading. These correlations include ties between all race relationships. The movie Crash contains the stories of several different groups of people of all sorts of races. Their individual lives are played into one another through links of racism and social stereotypes of each ethnicity. As the thirty-six hour period progresses, the intertwining of the individuals and their partners eventually crash together, and they all become part of a single storyline that tells the tale of how racism exists no matter who you are. The short excerpt “So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans” by Jimmy Santiago Baca talks about the impression of Mexicans stealing jobs from rightful American workers. He uses descriptive words to show the intensity of his feelings towards the assumptions made about Mexicans. In the movie Crash, there is a part where John Ryan, a clearly racist cop, interacting with Shaniqua, who holds a superior position in an insurance company. The dispute happens when she denies his insurance to help his father who is clearly in pain, because of the unnecessary and racist comments he made to her. One including that she was not “qualified” to be in her position of higher power due to the color of her skin. This can compare to lines 25-29 in Baca’s writing, “I see small white farmers selling out to clean-suited famers living in New York, who’ve never been on a farm, don’t know the look of a hoof or the smell of a woman’s body bending all day
Bibliography: Crash. Dir. Paul Haggis. Perf. Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Jennifer Esposito, William Fichtner, Brendan Fraser, Terrence Howard, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Thandie Newton, Ryan Phillippe, Larenz Tate. Pathe!, 2004. Frazier, John P. "So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans." Introduction to Literature: The Arts and Cultural Diversity. Boston: Pearson Learning Solutions, 2010. 74-75. Print.