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Posted by JAS on 05/06/06 23:16
"RodneyK" <"(RodneyK)RodneyKShanley"@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:zNMVf.17588$dy4.15873@news-server.bigpond.net.au...
> JAS wrote:
>> Hmmm. interesting view from Robert Jensen (a journalism professor at the
>> University of Texas at Austin)
>>
>>
>>
>> "Crash" is a white-supremacist movie.
>>
>> The Oscar-winning best picture -- widely heralded, especially by white
>> liberals, for advancing an honest discussion of race in the United
>> States -- is, in fact, a setback in the crucial project of forcing white
>> America to come to terms the reality of race and racism, white supremacy
>> and white privilege.
>>
>> The central theme of the film is simple: Everyone is prejudiced -- black,
>> white, Asian, Iranian and, we assume, anyone from any other racial or
>> ethnic group. We all carry around racial/ethnic baggage that's packed
>> with unfair stereotypes, long-stewing grievances, raw anger, and crazy
>> fears. Even when we think we have made progress, we find ourselves caught
>> in frustratingly complex racial webs from which we can't seem to get
>> untangled.
>>
>> For most people -- including the two of us -- that's painfully true; such
>> untangling is a life's work in which we can make progress but never feel
>> finished. But that can obscure a more fundamental and important point:
>> This state of affairs is the product of the actions of us white people.
>> In the modern world, white elites invented race and racism to protect
>> their power, and white people in general have accepted the privileges
>> they get from the system and helped maintain it. The problem doesn't
>> spring from the individual prejudices that exist in various ways in all
>> groups but from white supremacy, which is expressed not only by
>> individuals but in systemic and institutional ways. There's little hint
>> of such understanding in the film, which makes it especially dangerous in
>> a white-dominant society in which white people are eager to avoid
>> confronting our privilege.
>>
>> So, "Crash" is white supremacist because it minimizes the reality of
>> white supremacy. Its faux humanism and simplistic message of tolerance
>> directs attention away from a white-supremacist system and undermines
>> white accountability for the maintenance of that system. We have no way
>> of knowing whether this is the conscious intention of writer/director
>> Paul Haggis, but it's emerges as the film's dominant message.
>>
>> While viewing "Crash" may make some people, especially white people,
>> uncomfortable during and immediately after viewing, the film seems
>> designed, at a deeper level, to make white people feel better. As the
>> film asks us to confront personal prejudices, it allows us white folk to
>> evade our collective responsibility for white supremacy. In "Crash,"
>> emotion trumps analysis, and psychology is more important than politics.
>> The result: White people are off the hook.
>>
>> The first step in putting white people back on the hook is pressing the
>> case that the United States in 2006 is a white-supremacist society. Even
>> with the elimination of formal apartheid and the lessening of the worst
>> of the overt racism of the past, the term is still appropriate, in
>> ideological and material terms.
>>
>> The United States was founded, of course, on an ideology of the inherent
>> superiority of white Europeans over non-whites that was used to justify
>> the holocausts against indigenous people and Africans, which created the
>> nation and propelled the U.S. economy into the industrial world. That
>> ideology also has justified legal and extralegal exploitation of every
>> non-white immigrant group.
>>
>> Today, polite white folks renounce such claims of superiority. But
>> scratch below that surface politeness and the multicultural rhetoric of
>> most white people, and one finds that the assumptions about the
>> superiority of the art, music, culture, politics, and philosophy rooted
>> in white Europe are still very much alive. No poll can document these
>> kinds of covert opinions, but one hears it in the angry and defensive
>> reaction of white America when non-white people dare to point out that
>> whites have unearned privilege. Watch the resistance from white America
>> when any serious attempt is made to modify school or college curricula to
>> reflect knowledge from other areas and peoples. The ideology of white
>> supremacy is all around.
>>
>> That ideology also helps white Americans ignore and/or rationalize the
>> racialized disparities in the distribution of resources. Studies continue
>> to demonstrate how, on average, whites are more likely than members of
>> racial/ethnic minorities to be on top on measures of wealth and
>> well-being. Looking specifically at the gap between white and black
>> America, on some measures black Americans have fallen further behind
>> white Americans during the so-called post-civil rights era. For example,
>> the typical black family had 60 percent as much income as a white family
>> in 1968, but only 58 percent as much in 2002. On those measures where
>> there has been progress, closing the gap between black and white is
>> decades, or centuries, away.
>>
>> What does this white supremacy mean in day-to-day life? One recent study
>> found that in the United States, a black applicant with no criminal
>> record is less likely to receive a callback from a potential employer
>> than a white applicant with a felony conviction. In other words, being
>> black is more of a liability in finding a job than being a convicted
>> criminal. Into this new century, such discrimination has remained
>> constant.
>>
>> That's white supremacy. Many people, of all races, feel and express
>> prejudice, but white supremacy is built into the attitudes, practices and
>> institutions of the dominant white society. It's not the product simply
>> of individual failure but is woven into society, and the material
>> consequences of it are dramatic.
>>
>> It seems that the people who made "Crash" either don't understand that,
>> don't care, or both. The character in the film who comes closest to
>> articulating a systemic analysis of white supremacy is Anthony, the
>> carjacker played by the rapper Ludacris. But putting the critique in the
>> mouth of such a morally unattractive character undermines any argument he
>> makes, and his analysis is presented as pseudo-revolutionary blather to
>> be brushed aside as we follow the filmmakers on the real subject of the
>> film -- the psychology of the prejudice that infects us all.
>>
>> That the characters in "Crash" -- white and non-white alike -- are
>> complex and have a variety of flaws is not the problem; we don't want
>> films populated by one-dimensional caricatures, simplistically drawn to
>> make a political point. Those kinds of political films rarely help us
>> understand our personal or political struggles. But this film's
>> characters are drawn in ways that are ultimately reactionary.
>>
>> Although the film follows a number of story lines, its politics are most
>> clearly revealed in the interaction that two black women have with an
>> openly racist white Los Angeles police officer played by Matt Dillon.
>> During a bogus traffic stop, Dillon's Officer Ryan sexually violates
>> Christine, the upper-middle-class black woman played by Thandie Newton.
>> But when fate later puts Ryan at the scene of an accident where
>> Christine's life is in danger, he risks his own life to save her, even
>> when she at first reacts hysterically and rejects his help. The white
>> male is redeemed by his heroism. The black woman, reduced to incoherence
>> by the trauma of the accident, can only be silently grateful for his
>> transcendence.
>>
>> Even more important to the film's message is Ryan's verbal abuse of
>> Shaniqua, a black case manager at an insurance company (played by Loretta
>> Devine). She bears Ryan's racism with dignity as he dumps his frustration
>> with the insurance company's rules about care of his father onto her, in
>> the form of an angry and ignorant rant against affirmative action. She is
>> empathetic with Ryan's struggle but unwilling to accept his abuse,
>> appearing to be one of the few reasonable characters in the film. But not
>> for long.
>>
>> In a key moment at the end of the film, Shaniqua is rear-ended at a
>> traffic light and emerges from her car angry at the Asian driver who has
>> hit her. "Don't talk to me unless you speak American," she shouts at the
>> driver. As the camera pulls back, we are left to imagine the language she
>> uses in venting her prejudice.
>>
>> In stark contrast to Ryan and his racism is his police partner at the
>> beginning of the film, Hanson (played by Ryan Phillippe). Younger and
>> idealistic, Hanson tries to get Ryan to back off from the encounter with
>> Christine and then reports Ryan's racist behavior to his black
>> lieutenant, Dixon (played by Keith David). Dixon doesn't want the hassles
>> of initiating a disciplinary action and Hanson is left to cope on his
>> own, but he continues to try to do the right thing throughout the movie.
>> Though he's the white character most committed to racial justice, at the
>> end of the film Hanson's fear overcomes judgment in a tense moment, and
>> he shoots and kills a black man. It's certainly true that
>> well-intentioned white people can harbor such fears rooted in racist
>> training. But in the world "Crash" creates, Hanson's deeper awareness of
>> the nature of racism and attempts to combat it are irrelevant, while Ryan
>> somehow magically overcomes his racism.
>>
>> Let us be clear: "Crash" is not a racist movie, in the sense of crudely
>> using overtly racist stereotypes. It certainly doesn't present the white
>> characters as uniformly good; most are clueless or corrupt. Two of the
>> non-white characters (a Latino locksmith and an Iranian doctor) are the
>> most virtuous in the film. The characters and plot lines are complex and
>> often intriguing. But "Crash" remains a white-supremacist movie because
>> of what it refuses to bring into the discussion.
>>
>> At this point in our critique, defenders of the film have suggested to us
>> that we expect too much, that movies tend to deal with issues at this
>> personalized level and we can't expect more. This is evasion. For
>> example, whatever one thinks of its politics, another recent film,
>> "Syriana," presents a complex institutional analysis of U.S. foreign
>> policy in an engaging fashion. It's possible to produce a film that is
>> politically sophisticated and commercially viable. Haggis is clearly
>> talented, and there's no reason to think he couldn't have deepened the
>> analysis in creative ways.
>>
>> "Crash" fans also have offered this defense to us: In a culture that
>> seems terrified of any open discussion of race, isn't some attempt at an
>> honest treatment of the complexity of the issue better than nothing?
>> That's a classic argument from false alternatives. Are we stuck with a
>> choice between silence or bad analysis? Beyond that, in this case the
>> answer may well be no. If "Crash" and similar efforts that personalize
>> and psychologize the issue of race keep white America from an honest
>> engagement with the structure and consequences of white supremacy, the
>> ultimate effect may be reactionary. In that case, "nothing" may be
>> better.
>>
>> The problem of "Crash" can be summed up through one phrase from the
>> studio's promotional material, which asserts that the film "boldly
>> reminds us of the importance of tolerance."
>>
>> That's exactly the problem. On the surface, the film appears to be bold,
>> speaking of race with the kind of raw emotion that is rare in this
>> culture. But that emotion turns out, in the end, to be manipulative and
>> diversionary. The problem is that the film can't move beyond the concept
>> of tolerance, and tolerance is not the solution to America's race
>> problem. White people can -- and often do -- learn to tolerate
>> difference without ever disturbing the systemic, institutional nature of
>> racism.
>>
>> The core problem is not intolerance but white supremacy -- and the way in
>> which, day in and day out, white people accept white supremacy and the
>> unearned privileges it brings.
>>
>> "Crash" paints a multi-colored picture of race, and in a multi-racial
>> society recognizing that diversity is important. Let's just not forget
>> that the color of racism is white.
>>
>>
>>
>> Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at
>> Austin and the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism
>> and White Privilege. He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
>> Robert Wosnitzer is associate producer of the forthcoming documentary on
>> pornography "The Price of Pleasure." He can be reached at
>> robert.wosnitzer@mac.com.
>>
>
>
> The problem with moralizing about race and racial supremacy is one of
> degree. If the author's message became mainstream and e.g. there was a
> concerted political push over several centuries to destroy the 'white
> supremacist society' then who is to say that it wont stop there. Who is to
> say that an even more radical message is not adopted, until all the sins
> of the 'white supremacist society' have been purged.
> To describe the resultant society would be to rewrite the history of
> slavery with blacks as masters and whites as slaves.
>
> I'm afraid we will have to accept at some stage that even 'wronged'
> coloured people can sin or be judged to be sociopathic.
>
> RodneyK
> Enjoy
I liked the move myself in that it brilliantly focused on irrational anger
(with prejudice/differences as a frequent catalyst) that caused social
conflict.
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