Crash

In today’s society, the media portrays a different perspective of a story. People often stereotype racial identity based on what media tells the public and how people of colored skin portray themselves. Based on these actions, the mindset of racial stereotypes and prejudices, one is bias and judges towards another. In the movie “Crash,” there are times where a character had to face racial stereotypes and prejudice which caused a chain reaction of bias. Racial stereotype and prejudice brainwashes the human mind into confusion between reality and their own biased opinion. 

As the movie develops in the beginning of the movie, a car accident occurred between two different racial identities, an Asian woman  and a Mexican woman. The Asian woman blamed the Mexican woman for causing the accident and claiming that it was the Mexican lady's fault. She said, "Mexicans don't know how to drive, she braked too fast." The Asian woman used her own bias opinion on how a Mexican person drives because of the way she views Mexican people. She thinks they are not able to drive. Another example on how stereotype affects her perspective is when she told the Mexican woman that, "I'll call immigration on you, look what you did to my car!" The reason why the Asian woman has this perspective is because society often jokes about Mexicans hopping over the border, which also means that they are not legal citizens and that they can be deported back to their country. This scene allows the viewer to understand how the Asian woman used her bias towards the Mexican woman based on that stereotype she has towards her. The asian lady uses this stereotype against her and accuses her of wrecking her car when really it wasn’t her fault. 

Throughout the movie, another scene occurs between the owner of the a gun shop, who is a White man and a Persian family. The daughter and father discussed whether or not they wanted the gun in their own language. The white man became impatient and he yelled, “Yo Osama!” Due to the previous terrorist attack that happened during September 11, 2001, the owner felt some type of way because the group of people that attacked America were Middle Eastern people. Knowing about the accident that happened on 9/11, the owner stereotyped them as terrorist and used the word Osama towards the father. The white man also told the family to get out of the his country because he is biased toward Middle Easterners and the effect of that changed how he viewed the Middle Eastern family. He made many references to the twin towers and the planes crashing event to make them feel guilty about the tragic event. The white man took the tragic situation and was prejudices toward the Persian family because of his frustration of what happened in 9/11 and the fact that it was caused by Middle Eastern people.

  At the climax of the movie, a scene occurred between white police officer who was off duty and a African American male hitchhiker. When the officer came across the African American male, he offered him a ride. During their ride, the African American man saw a statue in the officer’s dashboard, he realized that he had the same statute in his pocket and chuckled. This scene causes the officer to say “Is there something that’s funny?” The African American man replied, “People.. man, people.” “People like me?” the white officer replies. The white officer took it to offense based on his race. The statue represented and meant something to the officer. However, the officer thought that the African American man was mocking him because he was white. Upset about the situation the officer pulls over. The officer says “Get out now!”As this scene escalates, the the African American reaches into his pocket to show him that he has the same exact statue. However, the officer misjudged, thinking that he is pulling out a gun and the officer shoots him. This shows a stereotype between these two characters because the officer is out in the field and base on the people that he arrested, are people of color. His duty made him use his bias perspective on how he think a black person is going to act upon in that situation. Without knowing anything much about this person, he hardly thought twice before he pulled the trigger and killed an innocent person. This shows that its your brain, its your thoughts, the thoughts of judgements that leads you to unfortunate situations. 

The scene that took place in this movie is very similar to something that happened two years ago in Florida. Trayvon Martin had a hood on his head, a bag of Skittles and Arizona tea in his pockets.  A man named George Zimmerman shot him saying it was out of self defense. Trayvon Martin was an innocent teenage boy who was now dead. There are police reports about George Zimmerman saying Trayvon Martin was going for his gun. It turns out that Trayvon Martin was unarmed. This connects with the scene in the movie because George thought that Trayvon Martin had a gun and was reaching for it, so in self defense he shot him. His bias against black people made him expect Trayvon to have a gun. In police reports George Zimmerman said “They always get away.” In this quote I think that Zimmerman is being bias towards the African American community because he is referring to blacks and how they get away with crime.He is saying that blacks are the only ones who are criminals. Zimmerman was a security guard for a gated community so he probably ran into situations with other blacks which caused him to be bias towards Trayvon Martin, thinking that just because he was black, that he was like every other black person. Also, Zimmerman said and compared “Martin to someone who looked looked like a thug or criminal.” The bias that Zimmerman had towards blacks based on racial stereotype made him think that because Trayvon Martin had his hoodie on, or maybe because he was black that he was a criminal. Zimmerman was simply being prejudice towards Trayvon Martin because he was black and those racial stereotypes got into his head which caused him to judge someone innocent.  

Racial stereotype and prejudice brainwashes the human mind into confusion between reality and their own biased opinion. People are not fully aware of what racial stereotypes and prejudices can do. It can change one’s perspective on someone and quickly judge them. These are some of the worlds most common mistakes repeated everyday by everyone.  

Sources: 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/trayvon-martin-shooter-teenager-gun/story?id=16000239 http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/18064-up-to-no-good-the-racial-profiling-of-trayvon-martin-abdulrahman-awlaki