New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: A worthy view of racism's intricacy & weight

New York Daily News - Ideas & Opinions - Stanley Crouch: A worthy view of racism's intricacy & weightA worthy view of racism's intricacy & weight

It is good to see a Hollywood movie remind those who need to know that the world is not all special effects, cartoons and fairy tales. In sometimes contrived ways, the makers of the new film "Crash" mean for us to think about the intricacies of contemporary American life.

They create situations in which we see racial politics of a police department and a district attorney. We see how dangerously a frustrated Iranian man acts when disrespectfully lumped with all Middle Easterners. The shadow world of Asian communities is put on display in surprising and shocking ways. Impositions placed by Negro criminals achieve freshness as we see the plight of a black middle class man.

The point of "Crash" is not about how different we are but that we are, finally, responsible to and for each other. It's a point that shows the sort of nerve we need in our moment.

Sometimes black people are trapped and the only way they can be saved is if white people decide to take risks and save them. Black criminals are a burden to everyone, and the black middle class need no longer allow itself to be pushed around by those knuckleheads who claim it is not "authentically black." The black middle class has to fight back but it also has to take the responsibility of protecting those below it when injustice shows its teeth.

Middle Eastern people embittered by the stereotypes that have come since 9/11 cannot sink down into the violence almost reserved for minorities. Everyone, even knuckleheads, should refuse to support the kind of slavery that goes on in the shadow worlds of some of our Asian communities.

Reviewers are either ecstatic or disturbed by the film's attempts to address cross-racial problems. It does not play to the expected clichés. We should not be surprised to be told that people are people, no group is perfect, apparent monsters can have hearts, the rhetoric of oppression can be used to justify criminality, and that members of a troubled minority will victimize their own kind or, literally, sell them into slavery. None of this should be startling, but it is.

There is bitterness among minorities toward whites whom they assume have power due to the rules of bigotry; and there is bitterness among whites who believe that whatever power or privilege minorities have is the result of bending the rules in their favor, not because of their abilities. We know that there are very few situations in which being white isn't an advantage. Such topics have long been looked into in our more serious television dramas, usually cop shows like "Hill Street Blues," "Homicide" and "NYPD Blue." "Crash" is in that line because pivot points are supplied by the complex nature of crime, violence, and accident.

"Crash" says some things about American life that we need to think about seriously in our ever more muddy vision of what must or must not be done. The problems of race and class are never less than real and they can only be handled if we face the truth that everyone is a participant in this aspect of our national drama.

Originally published on May 16, 2005