The Ramifications of Stereotypes

The Ramifications of Stereotypes

The movie Crash takes place in post 9-11 Los Angeles over a two day period and examines the lives of several different ethnic groups. With their stories interweaving amongst several different characters, including a black police detective, two car thieves, Hispanic locksmith, Persian storeowner, racist white cop, etc. this movie explores the good and bad in all of us, especially in a diverse society like America. By using an ensemble cast and with various plot sequences going at once, it helps take the attention away from one certain storyline and keeps things very interesting. It takes this indifferent group of characters from different social classes and ethnicities and traces how each of their lives collide with another, changing each of them forever. This film takes a look at the dangers of prejudice, both in subtle and obvious forms. It also calls upon the viewers to question their own prejudices as well. Crash examines the complex nature of human beings and how preconceived notions of people often lead to uninformed stereotypes, prejudices and judgments of others. Contrary to what many think, today, I will focus specifically on how the stereotypes (particularly negative) explored in the movie Crash are vibrant with us today and still lead to different forms of discrimination .

So what exactly is a stereotype? A stereotype is an overgeneralization (positive or negative) associated with a racial or ethnic category that goes beyond existing evidence. Stereotypes remain in our heads even if our personal beliefs differ because they are embedded in our everyday culture through the means of media, books, newspapers, TV, and movies. (2-28-07 Sociology lecture). We hear stereotypes through many different means but everyone has heard of certain stereotypes like Asians are real smart, blacks are lazy, Irish are alcoholics and that Muslims are all terrorists. Regardless though, a lot of Americans today tend to believe that we are now becoming a colorblind nation in where racial inequalities have all but disappeared. However, Charles A. Gallagher writes that color blindness is the dominant lens through “which whites understand contemporary race relations. Believing and acting as if American is colorblind allows whites to imagine a society where institutional racism no longer exists and racial barriers to upward mobility have been removed.”(Gallagher 579) This popular view does not hold in political, social and in economic institutions today. Minorities are still exploited by whites in many different ways. Although we hope to one day look at everybody as equal and the same, I will tell you why this has not and will not occur!

Stereotypes often result in prejudices of individuals, but from there it often leads to negative discriminatory actions. For example, in the beginning of Crash, Peter and Anthony (two black thieves) are walking in a nice white neighborhood approaching Sandra Bullock and Brendan Frazier. As they approach Sandra Bullock, she immediately cuddles into her husband’s arm and they kind of walk off to the side. Do you think they would have done that if it was an old couple walking past them? The answer is probably no, as they made a stereotypical generalization and then Bullock resorted to a form of prejudice without total knowledge of who the person really is. Stereotypes usually have their roots in experience with mass culture in society or information they received from friends and/or families. (wikipedia.org) It is hard to change these preconceived notions, as Devine and Elliot state because “overcoming stereotypes requires a great deal of personal motivation and effort and that efforts to suppress stereotypes may even heighten their accessibility. (Devine and Elliot 1148) Because blacks are stereotyped as being unintelligent, lazy or violent, these stereotypes often remain “a well- organized, frequently activated knowledge structure.”(Devine and Elliot 1140) Although the range of discriminatory actions may differ, discrimination often ranges across this continuum: “avoidance actions (like the one previously stated), rejection actions such as poor service in a restaurant, verbal attacks, physical attacks and threats by others including white police officers as well.”(Feagin 162) Although these don’t encompass all forms of discrimination, the ladder form again is portrayed in Crash. When Anthony (Ludacris) steals a navigator from Bullock and Frazier, a police man pulls over the wrong navigator just because he saw a black man driving in it. This white cop harasses the driver and especially his wife while threatening to arrest them for no apparent reason. Through discriminatory actions like these revealed in Crash, it is clear that stereotypes still live with us and are the primary reasons for people committing these unjust actions.

The popular outside perception of American racial organization continues to be the rigid distinction between blacks and whites. However with the increase in several Asian, Hispanic, and other minorities, this black-white divide has been much further complicated. (Schuman 128) Stereotypes do not only affect African Americans, as they continue to infiltrate the lives of other races/ethnicities as well. In Crash they depict several continuing Hispanic stereotypes. First, they show a Mexican locksmith and his family living in a poor, downtown enclave where gunshots are heard frequently. Robert D. Bullard explains how these poor people “often work in the most dangerous jobs, live in the most polluted neighborhoods, and their children are exposed to all kinds of environmental toxins in their playgrounds and at home. (Bullard 216) Other stereotypes revealed in the movie are from Mexicans being gang-bangers, thieves, always parking on people’s lawns and not knowing how to drive. These racial tensions are escalated throughout several events in the movie, while encounters with other races such as Persians, and Asians are included as well in the film. All these examples encompass several isolated incidents in where people unfairly generalize as a character of all members of that racial group.

Large members of the public seem to be under the false impression that stereotypes are fading. Many people seem to believe that American is a colorblind society and that every individual has an equal chance to move up the social ladder and obtain more benefits. However, the Devine and Elliot experiment concluded that “the black stereotype is not fading amongst whites; rather the personal beliefs are undergoing a revision. High and low prejudice individuals alike possess equivalent knowledge of the black stereotype; it is in their endorsement of the stereotype that they diverge.”