While watching Crash, one idea kept nagging at me in nearly every scene: the idea of power exchange. The concept of “power” I am using here perhaps needs a little explanation; “power” is here meant to express the control, or false sense of it, an individual has on his or her surrounding environment, including other individuals.
This “control” can be achieved in several ways, one of which, as shown in the film, is racism/sexism/any-ism. The persons in this work who actively participate in these -isms, for example John Ryan and Rick Cabot, do so in order to assert dominance over one group or class of people, and therefore assert dominance over some aspect of their lives. As we will see, however, this feeling of dominance or control is often merely superficial, which is when it becomes and -ism.
A perfect example of this “desire to control” situation is the Persian store owner, Farhad, mostly because he gives us two instances. First, we encounter him at the gun store as he struggles to communicate with the owner of the store. His broken English makes both he and the clerk frustrated, thus necessitating his daughter being used as a translator. This inability to communicate on a daily basis must leave the Persian man with a feeling of powerlessness.
He fills this gap by reacting angrily to those who don’t understand him, acting as if they are ignorant for not speaking his language, despite his status as a minority. This in itself is a form of racism, or perhaps more accurately ethnocentrism, that is, he is imposing an idea on others that his is the better language, and how dare they expect him to speak English in an English speaking nation? Through forcing this idea on others, Farhad gains control of his problems by finding the source of it: everyone else.
The second instance of “desire to control” is evident before and after the Persian family’s store is vandalized. Farhad doesn’t understand that the Hispanic locksmith, Daniel, can’t fix the door, thus leaving the store virtually undefended. After it is robbed and damaged, Farhad is left with a feeling of powerlessness: the store is his livelihood, and if he cannot protect it, he cannot provide for his family, which is all he has in the country.
To regain control of the whole situation, he again places the blame on an innocent target, Daniel. By having a person to blame, Farhad has the ability to remove the offender from his life, thus asserting dominance over an aspect of his life. However, as Daniel is innocent, this again turns into racism. He blames Daniel simply because he is Hispanic and happened to be there that night. Although Farhad may not himself be racist, and might not have ever thought anything racist about Hispanics, he has truly committed a racist action for the sake of controlling his life.
As explained, racism does not necessarily need to stem from a hatred or distrust of a specific people. Instead, it can be the result of using a convenient scapegoat to gain a false sense of security. A similar tactic has been used countless times throughout history, namely the Nationalist Socialist party using the Jews as scapegoats in 1930-40s Germany, and Muslims being cast as a violent faith in the bush regime (despite the ironic fact that the administrations actions have killed more innocents than the actions of all radical Islamic groups combined).
