Ethnocentrism In The Movie Crash

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Crash can be defined as a collision of two objects, most of the time we associate the word crash with a car accident. This same word is a title of a movie that came out in 2004. The move Crash takes place in Los Angles, California over a two-day period. The movie starts off with a car crash but the movie is not about car collisions. The collisions that happen in this film are ethnocentrism, stereotypes, and racism. We all know the popular phrase “six degrees of separation”, well this movie shows us how true that is. There is no main character in the movie but each character plays a major part in the racial collisions. Perception and interpretation were important factors for the plot of the movie and the actions of the people. Why is that, …show more content…
It when you become excessive and judgmental about others that can create a problem, the person may become ethnocentric. Ethnocentrism is defined as the tendency to view ones own group as the standard against which all other groups are judged. (Alberts, Nakayama, & Martin, 2007, p. 87) Ethnic means culture and centrism relates to the center of something. Put the root definition together then one can understand more of the meaning of ethnocentrism. Not only does the person judge the way of any culture different from theirs but they combined that with the thought that their own culture and way is better then anyone else’s. The movie Crash had a lot of examples when a character was behaving ethnocentrically. One example is when the Persian storeowner and his daughter go to buy a gun. The father struggled with English so the daughter translates what the white gun shop owner is saying. At this point the gun shop owner starts acting ethnocentrically toward the two Persians. He assumes they are Arabic .The father gets offend, and the storeowner kicks him out of the store. The White gun shop owner feels his culture is better then this man. Another example of ethnocentrism in the movie was the black carjacker that Ludacris played. He keep saying to the other black carjacker that whites feared him and pointed out a white couple walking towards them and how the wife pulled closer to her husband when she saw the black men. He …show more content…
Prejudice can be defined as a negative feeling toward a particular group or individual. Pointed out in our text it is the aftermath of stereotype and ethnocentrism. In the movie a white cop offends a black women working in the healthcare office because of her name. He needs her help and when she can’t help him he says races things. Later on that same white cop pulls over a black couple. We can see his negative views towards their race when he forces the couple out of the car humiliate them and sexually assault the wife. The prejudice the cop showed caused the couple to question the police.
Should a person stand up for their job of their race? That was a difficult decision Terrence Howard character had to make. That was a great scene that showed a culture clash. The co-director asks that Terrence talked with the black actor to sound more “black” or in other words “ghetto”. When I moved to Northern V.A. I experienced something like to this scene. A friend told me my daughter is losing her “black card”, because of the music and habits she learned since we’ve been in Lorton. Unlike Terrence Howard character I did not address this issue to my

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