Tawnice Pruitt
Sociology 2630
Crash Report
9/28/11
The movie Crash is a film made in 2004. The movie has a series of plots all dealing with
different situations. The various plots all deal with a problematic issues dealing with race in
todays society. The movie demonstrates racism, discrimination, prejudice, stereotypes, as well as
many other theories and definitions. The film focuses on multiple racial and ethnic groups.
Throughout this paper these groups will be introduced.
A stereotype is defined as, an over-exaggerated idea of a person or thing. At the
beginning of the film there is a great example of a stereotype that is used in todays society.
Opening the film there is a car accident between a Asian women and Hispanic women, both
middle aged. Both women are upset over the accident and are talking amongst one another along
with a police officer whom is observing the crash. The Hispanic women said, “Officer can you
write in your notebook how shocked I am to get hit by an Asian driver.” This is exaggerating the
idea that asians are bad drivers, when in actuality this is untrue.
A racial group is defined as, a group that is socially set apart because of obvious physical
differences. A easily determined example of a racial group is also at the beginning of the film,
where the two African American men are walking downtown. The two men are the only African
American people there, the remaining are Caucasion. This is a obvious, visual, physical
difference made between the two groups. At this point in the film there brings another example
of a stereotype. The two men go out to eat at a public restaurant, when leaving one of the men
mentions how their service wasn’t as good as the other customers there because of their race.
The man goes on continuing leading fact that they weren’t getting the same service, because they
know “black people don’t tip.” The waitress here is using the stereotype that black people don’t
tip, which cases her to neglect these tables more frequently. Then the two decided that they
wouldn’t tip, because they were being treated unfairly. The men leaving without tipping leads the
stereotype to be viewed as true. This defines a self fulfilling prophecy: something that is not true,
but everyone believes it to be true, so it becomes true. The waitress thought she knew they
wouldn’t tip, then by then men not tipping she becomes even more convinced of that stereotype.
In the movie there is an African American couple driving home from an award ceremony. The
wife was thought to be preforming sexual acts on her husband while operating the vehicle. This
was observed by a police officer and he quickly notices they’re black and immediately pulls
them over. This a example of racial profiling. Racial profiling is defined as, any police-initiation
action based on race and is easily relatable to the example.
In the movie there is an African American couple driving home from an award ceremony.
The wife was thought to be preforming sexual acts on her husband while operating the vehicle.
This was observed by a police officer and he quickly notices they’re black and immediately pulls
them over. This a example of racial profiling. Racial profiling is defined as, any police-initiation
action based on race and is easily relatable to the example.
Racism is defines as, doctrine one race is better than the other. An example of racism in
the film is when Sandra Bullock is having the locks changed on her door and the man doing it his
Hispanic. After he changes the locks Sandra complains to her husband about replacing the new
locks, because she is convinced that he had made copies of the keys so that he could break in and
steal all their belongings. Sandra was concluding this prediction just by the race and appearance
of this individual. Here Sandra is being a racist.
A hate crime is defined as, a criminal offense committed due to bias of race. A hate crime
that took place in this film is when the Persian family whom owned the convenient store was
vandalized, robbed and destroyed. The vandalism included racial slurs in the form of graffiti.
The slurs intended the family to be Arab, but in actuality the family was Persian. This is a hate
crime due to the circumstance that the crime was committed to the family because of their
thought up race.
There was a Caucasion man in the film who owned a Gun store. A middle eastern man
came into his store and the white man denied service to him purchasing any firearms. He denied
him service because he was middle eastern, this is an example of discrimination. This is also an
example of Merton’s Typology the prejudiced discriminator
-or all-weather bigot. The all-
weather bigot sticks to his prejudice acts in any situation, whether it’s losing him money or not.
A Caucasion police officer was calling a medical center regarding his fathers health
conditions. He began to argue with the women about the service he was getting from the
company and his voice tone became very edgy. Next he asks her name and she responds
“Shanequa Johnson” and he replied, “big fuckin’ surprise.” They end the call and he immediately
pulls over a African American women. Scape goat theory is defined as, a person blamed
irrationally for another persons problem. Here the police officer is pulling the lady over directly
after the first issue occurred, he is “taking it out” on the women he’s pulling over.
The movie gives many great examples that involve racism, prejudice and discrimination
theories. These all include serious issues the United States is facing everyday. There are positive
ways to reduce prejudice issues unlike these negative ways shown in the movie. According to
the class discussion the country needs to reduce the need to justify discrimination, educate, show
through our media and reach a common goal then these horrible issues can change.