The Yale Free Press

The phrase “it’s a movie about racism” does not usually get an excited response from the large number of right-leaning friends to whom I have recommended Crash. I hurry to qualify it with, “Well, you see, it’s not that kind of movie about racism.” That tends to help, but not much.

The truth is that I lack a real vocabulary in which to explain the kind of racism that Crash is about. I lack it because I have been robbed. The whole subject of race has been hijacked by the left and reduced to one of two general approaches: oppression of African-Americans from all walks of life by white supremacist capitalist patriarchs (to borrow an adjective phrase from noted black feminist bell hooks), with the villains possibly reaching repentance at some point, or celebration of the black identity and black identity politics. This standardization of the language and content of race according to the liberal agenda has made it practically impossible for conservatives to discuss the real role of racism and its derivatives in modern society.

A drop of fresh air in this frustrating, stagnant non-discourse came from, of all places, Canada – usually a source I try very hard not to learn anything from. With a cast that comes together brilliantly, from Ludakris to Matt Dillon, it would b a great pity if Crash failed to leave a mark not only in the history of film, but somewhere deep in the worldview of its viewers.

A number of energetic, fast-paced subplots are tied together in the movie by a car Crash, bringing together unlikely bedfellows from different ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. But these characters – a racist policeman depressed over his father’s illness; a rude black insurance company employee; a pair of black car thieves; a wealthy white woman; a black movie tycoon who cannot seem to figure out what his racial affiliation demands of him when it comes to common decency – really have quite a bit in common. Through them Crash makes it poignantly clear that the modern American is forced to act out a script written for him by a history of racial conflict, a script he did not choose and does not fully understand. Which, after all, does not make us very different from every other nation in history.

Crash is a perfectly non-political movie, at least on the American spectrum; it does not spell out any identifiable liberal or conservative message. It is simply a movie that shows that everybody is a racist – the white woman who cannot overcome her instinctive fear of young black men in the street; the black man who thinks racism an excuse for his criminal lifestyle; the Persian shop-owner, himself abused for his ethnicity, quick to accuse a perfectly competent Mexican locksmith; the wealthy Chinese who take advantage of illegal immigrants. The real problem is that, for as long as groups of people remain shaped by and pregnant with different histories and different cultural baggage, they will be alienated. This alienation can be mistaken for racial hatred, and easily transforms into hatred when pushed. The institutional solutions we have devised for this disease are often worse than the disease itself, as several well-placed lines in the movie make clear: as these institutions struggle to justify their own existence they not only admit but exaggerate its presence, and compensate for racism by reversing it. Crash also features two guns and two bullets, giving a grim indication of where the disease may lead – in the most accidental manner possible.

Any particular ethnic group is effectively, though perhaps not visually, irrelevant in the film. A more in-depth study of the dynamics of any given set of race relations would have to focus on specific evildoers – racists, affirmative action advocates, or Black Panthers; that would be precisely the narrow-minded view that the filmmakers seem to resent. Crash makes a tangible contribution to the dialogue on race by showing racism – or should we rather say, the malignant separation of cultures – as a state, a condition of our human universe, a sinful affliction of the same universality and the same proportions as greed, selfishness, or disloyalty.

Crash, true to its name, acts with great force, moving so fast and so violently that the viewer barely has time to stop and think. Its target emotion is not anger or resentment; it is pain, which is infinitely more difficult – and more essential – to respond to.

This pain, in fact, demands a response, and thanks to Crash I can share mine. In a society where we have eliminated all the sources of systematic racial injustice (other than affirmative action), the proper response to latent racism is neither to ignore it, nor to build new cumbersome institutions and pass new discriminatory laws. It is to treat cultural alienation the way we treat every other kind of sin. To admit its great power over us, rather than its “historical context;” to commiserate over our shared subjection to it, rather than point fingers or decide that, since everybody’s guilty of it, it must be all right; and to fight it in our own souls and in communion with those we love.

Lia Oksman is a senior in Trumbull College and Managing Editor of The Yale Free Press.