[Mb-civic] Robert Jensen critique of "Crash": A white-supremacist movie"

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-03/21jensen-wosnitzer.cfm

ZNet Commentary
Crash 
March 24, 2006
By Robert Jensen and Robert Wosnitzer 


"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 at 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 at mac.com. 



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