Racism is Racism

The movie that I decided to watch was “Crash”, directed by Paul Haggis. This movie goes through a number of stories from different viewpoints. We are able to see whites, Latinos blacks, Koreans, Iranians, criminals and cops deal with a lot of issues of racism that we see today. The movie takes us through a few different stories with different families of different races. We will see many things that they have to go through on a daily basis. Each family is racist against a race that is not of their own, and we are able to see the different ways that racism can be portrayed by different people.

While watching the movie I noticed a number of things that we have talked about in class. One of the many things would be racial profiling. In the beginning of the movie, a young white couple is walking out in the street when two young black men come and cross their path. She seems afraid but doesn't react, but soon after the same two black men hold her and her husband up and steal their car. This brings all of her fears to life when she admits later that she was worried, but didn't do anything and wishes she did. This is one of the many examples that we are able to see in the movie. Later she takes racial profiling even farther and tells her husband that she wants her locks changed again because the man that was doing it was Hispanic and had tattoos, which automatically made her assume he was in a gang. We see this on a day to day basis. People judging those around them by their skin color when most of the time they are just like them. Going through the same things in order to take care of their families.

We can see that not only whites are the racist ones, but everyone from every race has some kind of racist belief in them. Whites are constantly being looked down on for being racist. We rarely ever call out other races their racist behaviors because we are so focused on whites. We have discussed in class that this is because of the past when whites owned blacks as slaves. Now it’s seen as okay for blacks or other races to say racist things without being seen as racist, but when whites do it, it’s completely looked down upon.

Racism is racism no matter who it is coming from. The only way that racism can come to an end is if everyone stops supporting it. In the last chapter of Bonilla Silvia, we are able to see the ten steps to get past racism. All of these steps are things that we as individuals must do in order to stop it. According to Bonilla Silvia, “Be a positive role model to all the younger people in your life – if they hear you use foul language, then all likelihood they will to.” (402) lead by example because the only way we can change racism is by changing ourselves.  

This movie gave its viewers a good idea of what it’s like for people who are different from themselves and what they have to go through on a daily basis. We are able to see that through we are different races, we all have the same fears and in the end we’re not very different from each other. 

https://www.aclu.org/racial-justice/racial-profiling

http://archive.adl.org/hate-patrol/racism.html#.U2SKzfldVBY