Racial Stereotypes In “Crash“ and “Black Men in Public Places”

Stereotypes are a part of our everyday life. Sometimes we can find ourselves in a situation where we make stereotypes for a large group of people. Stereotypes affect people’s social lives, emotions, and how people interact with one another. In the movie “Crash”, the writer/director Paul Haggis addresses the problems within modern society including violence, and the bitterness of people towards one another. The movie, Crash, demonstrates the lives of various individuals from different social classes, who have life changing experiences in between their conflicting prejudices and stereotypes.

Racial stereotyping in the society at first seemed to be all about the White supremacy but it is more about the human diversity. Each race, Black, Mexican, or White are either effected or affected somehow by stereotyping negatively.

African Americans are stereotyped negatively in todays society. A racial stereotype that black men are dangerous and drawn to illicit activities. In the article by Brent Staples, “Black Men in Public Places”, which is about the author who discusses his own experiences on how he is stereotyped because he is an African American and looks intimidated in “public places”.

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For example, Staples states while he was walking behind a white woman at night in an “impoverished section of Chicago”. He noticed her picking up her pace and a few glimpses she was nowhere to be found. Staples, who is an intelligent man that is a graduate student at University of Chicago, had no intentions of hurting her but because he had both hands shoved into the pockets of a bulky military jacket and he was getting close to her, she made an assumption that he was either going to hurt or rob her, which he had no intentions of doing either.

This just shows one illustration how black people are negatively stereotyped.

Another example of how black people are negatively stereotype took place in the movie, “Crash”. Cameron, who is black filmmaker in Hollywood, is asked by one of his colleagues to reshoot one of his scenes again because one of his actors is not speaking “black” enough. His co-director which is white, feels like the audience would not recognize the actor as black unless he speaks in “slang”. This just shows how Hollywood has stereotyped black people by them having to talk a certain way, meaning they are not able to speak like a normal human being? Lastly, in the movie, “Crash”, it also has a scene that negatively stereotypes black people. Anthony and Peter, two African Americans, discuss that they there being stereotyped at a restaurant. They assumed that because they were black that it took them several hours and get in the restaurant. While they were in the restaurant, the servers would not give them the same respect that they showed the white people. The servers would go up the white people as often as they can and ask them if they needed anything while the servers were not as attentive to Anthony and Peter. Anthony and Peter were stereotyped based on the generalization that “Black people do not tip.”