Crash Blog Post

In the movie, Crash, it explains how different races have their own stereotypes and how people are affected by them. There are many scenes that caught my attention during the movie. One of them occurred during the first part of the movie in which a guy was buying a gun, and was denied because of his skin color. I believe this scene was exaggerated, but that does not mean that people do not think about that in their mind. This just comes to show that no matter what you get, whether it is citizenship or social security or any of those things, you are not truly American if  your skin color does not match what their belief of an American skin color is. I also fall into this category because there are times when I am ignorant towards another person's ethnicity. I prejudge them and allow my mind to make stereotypes about them that are not true. Another scene that caught my eye, was the scene of when the officer was searching the couple that he stopped over. The officer was mad at the black supervisor that would not have a doctor diagnose his father correctly. Due to this, he stopped over a couple who did absolutely nothing and wanted to search them. The cop inappropriately searched the wife and was waiting for some out-of-order response from the husband so he could arrest both of them. In all fairness, if the wife was being respectful to the officer and just stayed inside the car then what the cop did would not have happened to her. However, this does not justify the fact that what the cop did was wrong. Fear was definitely present in this movie. An example of this, is when the guy was driving recklessly and the cops started to chase him. When they pulled him over, he started acting erratic and the cops really wanted to pull the trigger. Luckily there was a cop that saved him. I really believe the root of all the anger presented in the movie is based on how people treat others with prejudice. Anger influences the actions in the movie because when people are angry they sometimes let the anger get a hold of themselves. This is presented in the movie when the store owner has his store vandalized and he believed it was the locksmith that did it. Therefore, he went to the locksmith's house to go shoot him, but luckily his daughter came to save him with the cloak (The bullet was a blank). There was conditioning present in the beginning of Crash, when the white lady comes closer to her husband, as they approach black men. This was conditioning because she believes that the black men are dangerous. An example, of thoughts/expectations was when the guy who molested the wife of the man during the stop over was the one who eventually saved her life, by helping her get out of the burning car. Avoidance occurred in the movie, when the cop was trying not to talk to his mother and get his brother. Verbal Dehumanization was constantly present in the movie. One that really stuck to me was the one where the Persian guy was just trying to buy a gun and was denied because of how he looks and he was called an Arab who lives in a mud hut. An example, of violence in the movie was when the two black guys went to go rob the white couple. An example, of institutional bias is when Shaniqua, the insurance supervisor, denied the man, who just wanted to help his father, insurance. A life-threatening act, that no one could probably forget is the time when the Persian guy was going to kill the Hispanic locksmith. Tommy Hanson's character proves that the way that officers act is not based on personal feelings towards another person, but the fact that race continues to reinforce the stereotypes that are present, which make the officers act in a certain type of way.