Emily
English 1301, Assignment #3

October 25th, 2015
Crash Essay E.B. White once said, “Prejudice is a great time saver. You can form opinions without having to get the facts.” This nation has become a melting pot of people from different cultures, races, religions, backgrounds, classes, and beliefs. Prejudice is born from personal experience and from generalizations and beliefs about a particular group of people. In the movie Crash, the director does an incredible job illustrating prejudice in today’s world by showing examples in our everyday society, how our personal lives can often influence how we interact, and how sometimes our preconceived ideas can be shattered by chance encounters. Society is full of prejudice, people are judged on the basis of their race, class, sex, or religion. The movie Crash depicts the various aspects of prejudice by showing the causes and effects it has on different people and how they interact with each other. For example, in the beginning of the movie a wealthy white couple, Rick and Jean, is walking down the street and Jean moves closer to her husband when she sees two black men, Anthony and Peter, walking towards them. They notice the woman’s reaction, then they rob the couple at gunpoint and steal their car. Then, after Rick and Jean get home they have their locks changed, Jean gets really upset when she sees the locksmith is Hispanic and wants to have the locks changed again because she thought the Hispanic man was going to sell the keys to his friends. Personal bias can often influence our everyday social interactions and how we treat others. When someone unfairly favors a person, a group of people, or a point of view over another is called bias. Quite often, people base their decisions on personal bias and it results in a very negative outcome. People make split second judgments of others and make assumptions based on nothing, which only leads to more misunderstanding and negativity. Bias is another underlying theme throughout the movie. In another scene from the movie, a store owner and his daughter, who are Persian, are at a gun shop and the owner of the gun shop, who is white, yells at him and calls him “Osama”. The white man stereotyped them as terrorists and told them to get out of his country because he is biased toward Middle Easterners which effected the way he treated that family. Sometimes a person can come along and completely shatter a preconceived idea we’d formed. Whether it was intentional or complete accident, we step out of our comfort zone and see things from a different perspective. Our lives come together in unexpected ways sometimes and it reminds us we are all connected in some way. It reminds us we are not alone. A racist police officer saves Christine, the black woman he previously sexually assaulted during a traffic stop, from her car that was about to go up in flames. Also, Anthony discovers a group of Thai captives locked in the back of a van he stole, and sets them free. Jean, who was carjacked in the beginning of the movie, fell down the stairs, and the only one who was there to help her was her housekeeper, Maria. The movie Crash offers an insightful reflection of our society. Even as diverse as our country is today with people from all different walks of life, there is still prejudice all around us. Crash depicts prejudice in today’s world by showing examples in our everyday society, how our personal lives can often influence how we interact, and how sometimes our preconceived ideas can be shattered by chance encounters.