Crash Again

This past week in class we watch the Academy Award winning film Crash written and directed by Paul Haggis. The film follows a number of characters each a different ethnicity/race. Throughout the film they cross paths with each other a number of times, during these interactions their racial prejudice is shown. Some of the characters resolve their problems by meeting each other like John Ryan did when he saved Christine from the car wreck, while others create more conflict like Tom Hansen did when he killed Peter. The film reveals real world problems that people in a diverse city like Los Angeles face, this was summed up by Graham Waters (Don Cheadle) "It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something". When someone doesn't interact with people of other races or ethnicities they tend to look towards stereotypes to define what a certain person is like. They tend to think all black people are hoodlums, all asians are smart, etc. The film addresses this by showing that stereotypes are completely irrelevant. At the beginning of the film Anthony is a no good person who steals cars and sells them to chop shops while, Cameron Thayer on the other hand is a successful law abiding television director, and both of them are black. Like world peace and ending world hunger I don't believe a completely tolerant society is possible but, we can make it better than it is now. Like previously mentioned people don't interact with others that are different then them, thats where the problem starts. If we were all raised around diverse people I think we would grow up without prejudices and overall this would somewhat resolve the problem. Unfortunately prejudice is passed down from generation to generation, racist parents cultivate these ideas in their children's minds before they are even allowed to make their own opinions. I think it will be a long time before we see any major step towards eliminating racism in our society.

Racism

Racism according to Merriam Webster is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. Racism is a scar off the human condition, a taboo trait in society today. Though, this week in class we learned that we are all implicitly racist to one degree or another. We learned that we are raised to believe white is better than black. This was somewhat shocking to me but what was really interesting was that even african-american children are conditioned to believe white is better than black. That shows that racism and prejudice are cultivated on a subliminal level because even families that intentionally try to raise their families as tolerant and open minded end up with this seemingly inherent belief of "white is better than black." This supports my belief that getting rid of racism is an unrealistic goal. That no matter how hard we try to rid ourselves of this stain on humanity we may make some progress toward getting rid of it but we will never completely rid ourselves of it completely. Like my uncle who I mentioned in my blog many posts back, he was raised in a town with only people that looked like him. And when he went on a cruise later in his life he actually feared black people. He feared people different from him because he'd never seen someone different from him before the cruise. But people who grow up around diverse cultures do not have this excuse. And yet we still have people like the neo-nazis, white supremacists, and other groups who are backwards and need a scapegoat for their problems much like the nazis did 70 years ago. By spending their time hating they believe they are giving their pointless lives some false sense of meaning. Now I will sign off before I get into a ranting tirade.

Monopoly

This week in class we took a further look into the class system in American society. Specifically we looked at how difficult it is to move up in economic class and how people are usually stuck in the class they were born into. To do this we played the classic board game "Monopoly" but with a slight deviation in the rules. We had everyone divided into 5 economic levels: upper-higher class, lower-higher class, upper-middle class, lower-middle class, and working class. I ended up rolling a low number to begin with so I was stuck with lower-middle class. Even before the game began just looking at the rules I knew it would be impossible to make a decent amount of money from the lower classes point of view, and I was right. When the game ended I had barely made any money (maybe a hundred dollars more than I had started with) we thought the other lower-middle class person had made it big but it turns out it was just a blatant miscalculation. I enjoyed this lesson it was a good microcosm for the real world and a fun and intuitive way to teach it. Though, once again I ask, what can we do? I mean like I mentioned in previous blog posts we live in a nation with a capitalist economy. Its not like we will change it and we shouldn't. The system does seem to favor those who are born into riches but, it wouldn't be fair to just redistribute the wealth. That being said I do agree with the notion of the lesson, that we should appreciate more of what we do actually have and not focus on what we don't have.