Racism In The Movie Crash

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Evaluate the notion(s) of racism conveyed by the film Crash

Crash is a movie produced by Canadian writer and director, Paul Haggis. The film is based in Los Angeles and it portrays the racial relationships between people as a multifaceted and complex matter. Crash is captured in a sort of indie-style filming, presenting us with the lives of many different people of different races; and how these people’s lives quickly become entangled within each other. Upon initially viewing Crash, the film appears brave and daring as it challenges racism and racial topics in a way that is rarely dealt with in Hollywood cinema. Crash shows us that racism is not restricted to one racial group but that every individual in our society has biased and bigoted …show more content…
The first point sees racism as a set of beliefs towards ‘races’. The second point sees these beliefs as having the capacity of steering individuals into developing prejudice. Prejudice is defined as a set of attitudes towards a whole group of people. The final point sees these prejudiced attitudes as having the potential to prompt individuals into racial discrimination against minority groups (Schaefer, 1990; Bonilla-Silva, 2001). Bonilla-Silva (2015) defines racism as the “product of racial domination projects (e.g., colonialism, slavery, labour migration, etc.), and once this form of social organisation emerged in human history, it became embedded in societies” (p.2). Racism generated the construction and continues to generate the construction of ‘races’ out of people who were not so before. An example of this construction of ‘races’ can be viewed in the European people who gradually become ‘white’ by abandoning their tribal heritages and local identities (Painter, …show more content…
Racial advantage is a term that refers to the unmerited advantages that benefit white people at the expense of other racial groups or are refused to other racial groups. When discussing race, it is common to reference the unequal and prejudiced procedures and rules that effect individuals. However, race cannot be fully identified without recognising ‘white privilege’. White privilege refers to the white racial group that is situated at the top of the social hierarchy; benefiting from the advantages of racism (Bell et al, 2007). White privilege, also referred to as white supremacy, is a racial ideology that can be defined as a structure that justifies and produces white advantage or privilege within social, political and cultural institutions in a society. According to this ideology, the interests and views of white people are dominant in society and that white culture, white people and all things linked to ‘whiteness’ are superior. All other racial groups are inferior to whites (Gillborn, 2006). White dominance is recreated and maintained daily throughout these political, cultural and social institutions where white people are in significant control of resources (Ansley, 1997).
Another concept to understand within racism is racialization. Stereotyping often involves racialization. Racialization is the practice of attributing racial or ethnic identities to an association, social practice
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