Review: Crash

Many people fail to accept the unfortunate truth that racism still exists in our current society. It shows up in many different forms and situations. “Crash” is a movie that accurately displays different ways racism is played out in our culture.
Issues of race cause a group of strangers in Los Angeles to physically and emotionally collide during the movie “Crash”. It brings to life the real issues of discrimination that occur daily and are often overlooked. The movie includes several characters that are all somehow involved in discrimination. Some characters fall victim to racism while others commit acts of discrimination. Throughout the movie it becomes clear that each character is related in some way and how discrimination affects them all.
Graham is a police detective whose brother is a street criminal, and it is painful for him to know that his mother cares more about his thieving brother than him. Rick is an L.A. district attorney whose wife, Jean is very discriminative against people who do not share the same skin color as her. Jean’s worst fears of minorities come to life when her car is stolen at gunpoint by two African American men. Anthony is one of the men who assisted in the car jacking and he hates Caucasian people as much as Jean dislikes people of color. Anthony’s partner in crime was Peter who is also Graham’s brother. Cameron is an African American man who has earned a respectable living and is fairly wealthy. While driving home from a party, Cameron and his wife, Christine were pulled over by Officer Ryan and humiliated. Officer Ryan’s new partner, Officer Hansen watches in disgust while his partner inappropriately searches the couple. Daniel is a Mexican American, hard-working locksmith and dedicated father. However, many people don’t trust him because of the image he displays. Although he is an honest man, his ethnic background combined with his tattoos is enough to make people suspicious of him. Farhad is a Middle Eastern store owner, who fails to trust most people. Due to his lack of trust, and his previous experiences of being discriminated against, Farhad feels he needs a gun to protect himself. These characters were all interconnected and it were all in some way affected by the racism and hatred around them.
When watching the movie Crash, feelings of anger and frustration were brought to the surface. It was upsetting to see people act with such hatred and discriminate against people solely based on race. It was even more frustrating to accept the idea that similar situations occur in real life. Judging and stereotyping people according to their ethnic background is unfair and wrong. Although they were too blind to see it, every person in the movie was a part of the same race; the human race. Each person was different, unique and special in their own way. Some of the characters in “Crash” failed to recognize the ignorance of their racist beliefs and the negative effects it had on people. For example, Jean was so biased against people of color that she didn’t even trust the locksmith that was hired to change her locks. The locksmith, Daniel was a trustworthy man. However, Jean could not look past his outside image to see this.
To further emphasize this point, Daniel had to go through another similar situation in the movie. Farhad, the Middle Eastern store owner, didn’t trust Daniel when he told him that he needed to fix his door not the locks. Because of Farhad’s ignorance, his shop was broken into. He blamed Daniel and retaliated by trying to kill him. There is no way that Farhad could justify what he did. He was wrong for not listening to Daniel and blaming his own ignorance on someone else because he was blinded by hate.
A part of the movie that was extremely disturbing happened when Peter was killed by Officer Hansen. Throughout the entire movie, Officer Hansen was trying to be fair to people of all different ethnic backgrounds. He was portrayed as an understanding young man with the potential to see both sides of a story, regardless of race. However, I believe all the hatred that was occurring around caused Officer Hansen to become corrupted. Although he wanted to trust Peter, Officer Hansen couldn’t help but think of the stereotype that has been formed about African American men. When Peter was just trying to show Officer Hansen a figurine they coincidentally shared, he shot him, thinking Peter was pulling out a gun.
Overall, this movie did an exceptional job of accurately portraying racism. Each character in the movie shared some kind of special link and it was very interesting to find out how they were all related. “Crash” is a movie that forces people to use their intellect and causes realization of what goes on our culture today. It displays a powerful message that is almost impossible to ignore. Racism is wrong and discriminating against people solely based on their ethnic background is ignorant and can only result in negative outcomes.

Gloria Yamato

This article was about people of color dealing with oppression. The author argues that no matter what, people of color will always be oppressed. She gives solid information and backs it up with examples. The authors concerns are how will people of color ever overcome oppression and be equal. In the opening statement she states “racism- simple enough in structure, yet difficult to eliminate”.

This quote made a lot of sense to me when I read it because not only is it true, it is reality. People know so much about racism but when asked how do we end it, the answer you here is an excuse. Another strong point that the author makes is her forms of racism. I agree with all her forms of racism except unaware/self-righteous. In her explanation of unaware/self-righteous she discredits white people that try to help people of color as if they are only trying to help to pay back what they have done to people of color.

I appreciate any white person that extends an arm out to people of color. It is bad enough that us people of color have a hard time getting by on our own because of are skin color. Besides that, I felt that the author was very educated and a great spokeswomen for people of color.

Tough Guise

They movie Tough Guise was a good movie that young men should watch and focus on. The video shows how media and certain images corrupt society today. The main ideology that is being corrupted is the image of a “real man”. As a child growing up I was always thought that a “real man” was someone who takes care of business, and his family. These days, the ideal real man needs a gun, he needs to sale drugs and he needs respect. Where I grew up at, this is ideal real man is who everyone wants to be like and that is sad. But what can you do when there is few positive role models these days and to top it off, the media makes it even worst by glorifying the bad guy.

When I seen the title of the movie I thought to myself, why is guise spelled that way? Before the movie came one I though it was “Tough Guys” instead of the other spelling. After watching the movie I realized why it is spelled that way. The media is portraying an image that is a disguise. Half of these “tough guys” that you see on TV are not so tough when the cameras are turned off. This is bad because kids actually think the world of these “tough Guise” and the worst part is that these kids often imitate what they see the tough guys do.

A strong quote that I took from the movie was when the commentator dwelled on the topic about how pop culture glorifies respect. Most tough guy movies portray the image that you will only get respect by disrespecting someone else. This alone has gotten many teens killed and harmed. Another good point that I received from the movie is how there is very few movies that display vulnerability. I feel that this is why this country is so violent because all you see is violence. It is sad because when a man shows his vulnerable side, he is considered a “faggot”, “queer”, or less of a man which forces men to always put this tough guy disguise on.

The American Holocaust

First off I would like to say that after reading about the American holocaust I became very frustrated and disgusted with the government officials that represent America. To be honest I was not that educated on the history of the native people but I guess you can blame it on the school system that blinded me with the “greatness” of Christopher Columbus. To read about all the gruesome things that were done to the Native people sadden me tremendously. Having your limbs chopped off, burned alive, and hunted for game is the highest level of disrespect if there is one. What really frustrates me is the fact that we as Americans are basically celebrating these horrible acts on Columbus Day.

I know that we can not teach our children this in elementary but there has to be a time other then college were this needs to be learned. This goes to show how corrupted this nation is because everyone does not get a chance to go to college nor do they get a chance to learn about many other horrible things this nation has done. It is also sad that we have to take a test like the SAT to go to college and find out the truth. We are basically paying the government to learn the truth. Another thing that frustrated me was how all these government officials and politics had the nerve to over look the situation as if it never happen. Native Americans had there land raped from them for nothing basically.

The book stated that some of Native American land was used to dump “toxic waste”. So basically (It sickens me to say we) we killed million for land to dump toxic waste and greed. J.H Elliott had the nerve to say that the use of the word genocide to describe what happen to the Native Americans was basically inappropriate. Just to read what he said frustrated me because I could not believe he could say something like that. I honestly want to know what other word you could possibly use to describe what happen to the Native American but the word holocaust.

Racial Formation

Racial formation to me was another way to try to organize the way we look at race. The book said that from a racial formation perspective, "race is a matter of social structure an cultural representation". The quote its self is full of stereotype to me because if your going to figure out what is race based on these two aspects you will have to be judgmental an you will have to stereotype. Social structure to me is questioning how you live your life and who do you associate with. Cultural representation to me is questioning where you are from, you background and your nationality.

For every race there is a stereotype comment that can be said and that is sad. I feel that race should not be judge it should be evaluated.
Every white person you see is not a racists and every black person you meet does not steal. I feel that every individual has his/her own race and it is on them to determine how they want to represent it. If you are ignorant that is how you will be judge and stereotyped. In the book, Charles Murray said that “race is not a morally dismissible reason for treating one person differently form another”. I disagree with that quote for the fact that people do not just wake up in the morning and decide to dislike or question a certain individual based on his/her race.

Another line that is frequently used by many people including myself that the book stated is “funny, you don’t look black”. (Black can be replaced with white, Asian, Native American, etc.) I can not count how times I have used this line and never knew that I was stereotyping what a certain race is suppose to look like. Who gives anybody the right to define what black or white person is suppose to look like? I never looked at it in that perspective when I used to say that but now I see.

Sexism in the gaming industry

Before I read this atricle I never really looked at video games in this sense. It is true that women are exploited demoralized in video games. The only video game that i can think of that has a woman in power is Tomb Raider but if you take the article into consideration, you can point out numerous things about the game. First you can look at her outfit; short shorts with a shirt that shows alot of clevage. This adds arusal to the game. Another game that degrades women is Grand Theft Auto. In this game they have prostitutes that are walking down the street saying demoralizing things. The game even allows you to pick them up and go to a secluded area to have sex with them. This is one of the most wanted games in America today and in the article it states that games like this are teaching children that this is they way that women are looked upon in real life. Im not trying to be a hipocrit because I play these games too but I do agree with what the article had to say about video games these days.

5 Faces of Oppression

After reading the five faces of oppression, I can truely say that I agree with alot things that Irish Young was stating in the reading. I feel that the faces make solid arguments and back them up with soild information. Exploitation to me made alot of sense because people of color an the working class have been exploited for a while now and it is becoming more obvious every day. A statement that stood out to me was when young said "where ever there is racism, there is the assumption more or less enforced that memebers of the oppressed racial groups are or ought to be servents". I agree with this statement because this is how people of color have been looked upon ever since the slavery days and even after that. When I read about marginalization it reminded me of people that cannot go to college because of the SAT. Marginalization talks about blocked opportunities an that is exactly what the SAT does to minorities. I know too many people that could not get a college education because of the SAT an in result they had to be a "nonprofessional" as young would call it. I think that powerlessness ties into marginalization because they both talk about blocked opportunities and how people of color suffer from being a nonprofessional.

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