Katrina Relief Urban Plunge (KRUP) 2006
Meditation on Crash (with Ezekiel 22)
1. In the beginning of Crash, Don Cheadle’s character (the detective, boyfriend of Jennifer
Esposito) says that people need to “crash” into each other to be sensitized to one another.
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How is God at work in Ezekiel 22 to sensitize the people of Israel to Himself and to
one another?
From what you are learning about Louisiana and New Orleans, how and why might
God be at work through Katrina to “crash” people into one another?
2. How is Los Angeles as it is described in Crash similar to/different from your city?
3. Which characters do you most identify with most identify with in the movie? Why?
4. Locate in Crash those who Ezekiel refers to as “foreigners,” “poor,” and “needy” (vv.7
and 29). In what ways do their experiences reflect the Israel’s situation in Ezekiel 22?
5. In what ways do the experiences of the foreigners, widows, and poverty-stricken in the
movie reflect some of your experiences or the experiences of people you know?
6. In v. 30, what would have staved off God’s wrath toward Israel?
7. Who are the heroes in Crash? What acts of courage do they perform? Use your
imagination: How might Israel have benefited from such heroes?
8. By the end of Crash, which characters have their weaknesses/flaws brought to the
surface? For which characters do virtue and character unexpectedly rise to the surface?
From these reality checks, what do we learn about true heroism?
9. In your exploration of God’s heart for justice and equality, what reality checks have you
run into concerning...
 Your own power, influence, and privilege?
 The power, influence, and privilege of your racial/ethnic group or your family?
 Your own attitude as you wrestle with these issues?
10. Assume that you are the person God is scouring the earth for in Ezekiel 22.30. In your
city, what people-groups are in need of your courage and love? How can you draw near to
them? What will it cost you?
Ranson Fellowship has a review and discussion questions at:
www.ransomfellowship.org/M_Crash.html
Questions for Discussion and Reflection:
1. What was your initial or immediate reaction to Crash? Why do you think you
responded as you did?
2. In what ways were the techniques of film-making (casting, direction, lighting, script,
music, sets, action, cinematography, editing, etc.) used to get the film’s message(s)
across, or to make the message plausible or compelling? In what ways were they
ineffective or misused? Two very important aspects of cinematic technique evident in
Crash are the editing and the music. How was the editing used to enhance the story
line? How did the music enhance it?
3. What is made attractive in Crash? How is it made attractive? How does this change the
impact of the film?
4. Most stories actually are improvisations on a few basic motifs or story-lines common
to literature. What other films come to mind as you reflect on this movie? What novels
or short stories? What Scriptures?
5. With whom did you identify in the film? Why? With whom were we meant to identify?
Which character offended you the most? Why? Offended you the least? Why? Discuss
each main character in the film and their significance to the story.
6. What is the significance of the ending snowstorm?
7. How satisfying is the conclusion to the film? How satisfying is it meant to be?
8. Where have you noticed racist attitudes and/or actions? To what extent have you been
personally touched by racism? To what extent and in what ways have you found
yourself tempted to stereotype people?
9. How would you answer the question, “Is it a good movie?” To what extent do you
agree with Grooms’ analysis of this question?
10. “All too often,” Grooms writes, “there is a disconnect between what I know to be true
and the way I really see things.” To what extent is this true of you? Where does it tend
to reveal itself? What are you doing about it?
11. Director “Haggis described a good film as one that ‘makes you ask questions of
yourself as you leave the theater.’” Is this how you identify a “good film?” Why or why
not?
12. In Blaise Pascal’s day making sense of the two sides of human nature was thought to
be a persuasive argument for the gospel. Do you find it persuasive? Why or why not?
13. To what extent are you developing meaningful relationships with people very unlike
you—in terms of race, or cultural background, or religion, or world view, or lifestyle, or
values? What plans should you make? What will be missing in your life if, in an
increasingly globalized world, you remain isolated in a group with people largely like
yourself?
March 20, 2006
“Crash” and the self-indulgence of white America
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 pseudorevolutionary 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 onedimensional 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 Wosnitzer is associate producer of the forthcoming documentary on
pornography “The Price of Pleasure.” He can be reached at
robert.wosnitzer@mac.com.
Authors Website: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/%7Erjensen/index.html
Authors Bio: Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at
Austin and a member of the board of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center,
http://thirdcoastactivist.org/. He is the author of The Heart of Whiteness: Race,
Racism, and White Privilege and Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our
Humanity (both from City Lights Books). He can be reached at
rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.