Editor’s note: GEORGE CLOONEY is making guest appearances on all kinds of blogs ever since his post Academy Awards show comments that went something like, “the white man is the devil”. Now we at the website don’t totally believe that statement because we have seen some devilish things done by all races of people, but we thought that if we asked GEORGE to clarify himself then maybe his comments wouldn’t be chalked up to the free premium booze at the Vanity Fair party. Plus, GEORGE is a big fan of our Hot Azz Mess photo galleries so how could we hate on him?
‘Crash’ is a white-supremacist movie.
The Oscar-winning best picture – widely heralded, especially by white liberals, for advancing an honest discussion of race in the United States – is, in fact, a setback in the crucial project of forcing white America to come to terms with the reality of race and racism, white supremacy and white privilege.
The central theme of the film is simple: Everyone is prejudiced – Black, white, Asian, Iranian and, we assume, anyone from any other racial or ethnic group. We all carry around racial/ethnic baggage that’s packed with unfair stereotypes, long-stewing grievances, raw anger, and crazy fears. Even when we think we have made progress, we find ourselves caught in frustratingly complex racial webs from which we can’t seem to get untangled.
For most people – including myself – that’s painfully true; such untangling is a life’s work in which I try to make progress, but never feel finished. But that can obscure a more fundamental and important point: This state of affairs is the product of the actions of white people like myself. In the modern world, white elites invented race and racism to protect their power, and white people in general have accepted the privileges that we get from the system and helped maintain it. The problem doesn’t spring from the individual prejudices that exist in various ways in all groups but from white supremacy, which is expressed not only by individuals but in systemic and institutional ways. There’s little hint of such understanding in the film, which makes it especially dangerous in a white-dominant society in which white people are eager to avoid confronting our privilege.
So, ‘Crash’ in effect is white supremacist propaganda because it minimizes the reality of white supremacy. Its faux humanism and simplistic message of tolerance directs attention away from a white-supremacist system and undermines white accountability for the maintenance of that system. I have no way of knowing whether this was the conscious intention of writer/director PAUL HAGGIS, but it emerges as the film’s dominant message.
While viewing ‘Crash’ may make some people, especially white people, uncomfortable during and immediately after viewing, the film seems designed, at a deeper level, to make white people feel better. As the film asks us to confront personal prejudices, it allows us white viewers to evade our collective responsibility for white supremacy. In ‘Crash’, emotion trumps analysis, and psychology is more important than politics. The result: White people are off the hook.
The first step in putting white people back on the hook is by pressing the case that the United States in 2006 is a white-supremacist society. Even with the elimination of formal apartheid and the lessening of the worst of the overt racism of the past, the term is still appropriate, in ideological and material terms.
The United States was founded, of course, on an ideology of the inherent superiority of white Europeans over non-whites that was used to justify the holocausts against the indigenous people and the Africans, which created the nation and propelled the U.S. economy into the industrial world. That ideology also has justified legal and extralegal exploitation of every non-white immigrant group.
Today, polite white people renounce such claims of superiority. But scratch below that surface politeness and the multicultural rhetoric of most white people, and one finds that the assumptions about the superiority of the art, music, culture, politics, and philosophy rooted in white Europe are still very much alive. No poll can document these kinds of covert opinions, but one hears it in the angry and defensive reaction of white America when non-white people dare to point out that whites have unearned privilege. Watch the resistance from white America when any serious attempt is made to modify school or college curricula to reflect knowledge from other areas and peoples. The ideology of white supremacy is all around.
That ideology also helps white Americans ignore and/or rationalize the racialized disparities in the distribution of resources. Studies continue to demonstrate how, on average, whites are more likely than members of racial/ethnic minorities to be on top on measures of wealth and well-being. Looking specifically at the gap between white and Black America, on some measures Black Americans have fallen further behind white Americans during the so-called post-civil rights era. For example, the typical Black family had 60 percent as much income as a white family in 1968, but only 58 percent as much in 2002. On those measures where there has been progress, closing the gap between Black and white is decades, or centuries, away.
What does this white supremacy mean in day-to-day life? The New Yprk Times highlighted one recent study found that in the United States, a Black applicant with no criminal record is less likely to receive a callback from a potential employer than a white applicant with a felony conviction. In other words, being Black is more of a liability in finding a job than being a convicted criminal. Into this new century, such discrimination has remained constant.
That’s white supremacy. Many people, of all races, feel and express prejudice, but white supremacy is built into the attitudes, practices and institutions of the dominant white society. It’s not the product simply of individual failure but is woven into society, and the material consequences of it are dramatic.
It seems that the people who made ‘Crash’ either don’t understand that, don’t care, or both. The character in the film who comes closest to articulating a systemic analysis of white supremacy is Anthony, the carjacker played by the rapper LUDACRIS. But putting the critique in the mouth of such a morally unattractive character undermines any argument he makes, and his analysis is presented as pseudo-revolutionary blather to be brushed aside as we follow the filmmakers on the real subject of the film – the psychology of the prejudice that infects us all.
That the characters in ‘Crash’ – white and non-white alike – are complex and have a variety of flaws is not the problem; we don’t want films populated by one-dimensional caricatures, simplistically drawn to make a political point. Those kinds of political films rarely help us understand our personal or political struggles. But this film’s characters are drawn in ways that are ultimately reactionary.
Although the film follows a number of story lines, its politics are most clearly revealed in the interaction that two black women have with an openly racist white Los Angeles police officer played by MATT DILLON. During a bogus traffic stop, DILLON’s Officer Ryan sexually violates Christine, the upper-middle-class black woman played by THANDIE NEWTON. But when fate later puts Ryan at the scene of an accident where Christine’s life is in danger, he risks his own life to save her, even when she at first reacts hysterically and rejects his help. The white male is redeemed by his heroism. The black woman, reduced to incoherence by the trauma of the accident, can only be silently grateful for his transcendence.
Even more important to the film’s message is Ryan’s verbal abuse of Shaniqua, a black case manager at an insurance company (played by LORETTA DEVINE). She bears Ryan’s racism with dignity as he dumps his frustration with the insurance company’s rules about care of his father onto her, in the form of an angry and ignorant rant against affirmative action. She is empathetic with Ryan’s struggle but unwilling to accept his abuse, appearing to be one of the few reasonable characters in the film. But not for long.
In a key moment at the end of the film, Shaniqua is rear-ended at a traffic light and emerges from her car angry at the Asian driver who has hit her. “Don’t talk to me unless you speak American,” she shouts at the driver. As the camera pulls back, we are left to imagine the language she uses in venting her prejudice.
In stark contrast to Ryan and his racism is his police partner at the beginning of the film, Hanson (played by RYAN PHILLIPE). Younger and idealistic, Hanson tries to get Ryan to back off from the encounter with Christine and then reports Ryan’s racist behavior to his black lieutenant, Dixon (played by KEITH DAVID). Dixon doesn’t want the hassles of initiating a disciplinary action and Hanson is left to cope on his own, but he continues to try to do the right thing throughout the movie. Though he’s the white character most committed to racial justice, at the end of the film Hanson’s fear overcomes judgment in a tense moment, and he shoots and kills a black man. It’s certainly true that well-intentioned white people can harbor such fears rooted in racist training. But in the world ‘Crash’ creates, Hanson’s deeper awareness of the nature of racism and attempts to combat it are irrelevant, while Ryan somehow magically overcomes his racism.
Let me be clear: ‘Crash’ is not a racist movie, in the sense of crudely using overtly racist stereotypes. It certainly doesn’t present the white characters as uniformly good; most are clueless or corrupt. Two of the non-white characters(a Chicano locksmith and an Iranian doctor) are the most virtuous in the film. The characters and plot lines are complex and often intriguing. But “Crash” remains a white-supremacist movie because of what it refuses to bring into the discussion.
At this point in my critique, defenders of the film have suggested to me that I expect too much, that movies tend to deal with issues at this personalized level and I shouldn’t expect more. This is evasion. For example, whatever one thinks of its politics, another recent film, my film, ‘Syriana’, presents a complex institutional analysis of U.S. foreign policy in an engaging fashion. It’s possible to produce a film that is politically sophisticated and commercially viable. HAGGIS is clearly talented, and there’s no reason to think he couldn’t have deepened the analysis in creative ways.
‘Crash’ fans also have offered this defense to us: In a culture that seems terrified of any open discussion of race, isn’t some attempt at an honest treatment of the complexity of the issue better than nothing? That’s a classic argument from false alternatives. Are we stuck with a choice between silence or bad analysis? Beyond that, in this case the answer may well be no. If ‘Crash’ and similar efforts that personalize and psychologize the issue of race keep white America from an honest engagement with the structure and consequences of white supremacy, the ultimate effect may be reactionary. In that case, “nothing” may be better.
The problem of ‘Crash’ can be summed up through one phrase from the studio’s promotional material, which asserts that the film “boldly reminds us of the importance of tolerance.”
That’s exactly the problem. On the surface, the film appears to be bold, speaking of race with the kind of raw emotion that is rare in this culture. But that emotion turns out, in the end, to be manipulative and diversionary. The problem is that the film can’t move beyond the concept of tolerance, and tolerance is not the solution to America’s race problem. White people can – and often do – learn to tolerate difference without ever disturbing the systemic, institutional nature of racism.
The core problem is not intolerance but white supremacy – and the way in which, day in and day out, white people accept white supremacy and the unearned privileges it brings.
‘Crash’ paints a multi-colored picture of race, and in a multi-racial society recognizing that diversity is important. Let’s just not forget that the color of racism is white.
George chose a good piece from two cats named Robert. He got a future in this blogging game.
When was the third picture (White House) taken
No Dude.
I needs a laink, cuz this nigg! did not say this:
In the modern world, white elites invented race and racism to protect their power, and white people in general have accepted the privileges that we get from the system and helped maintain it. The problem doesn’t spring from the individual prejudices that exist in various ways in all groups but from white supremacy, which is expressed not only by individuals but in systemic and institutional ways. There’s little hint of such understanding in the film, which makes it especially dangerous in a white-dominant society in which white people are eager to avoid confronting our privilege.”
DP gimmie the laink, gimime the laink.And tell Billy Sunday I got something cooking re his Venus Hottentot request, so tell him to f*ckwichagirl in like a hour or so.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/whiteness19.htm
I could barely read your post for scrolling back and forth looking at the pictures. I have seen them many times….websites, museums, books, etc.
Each time, I am just as frozen.
Powerful…smart…to use those images with your post about “Crash”. Those pictures are in black and white, or aged paper…but its still going on today. White folks have been “smelling themselves” (as my Granny would say) in public, for the past few weeks: Duke, Neal Boortz, Rush Limbaugh, etc. WE, BLACK PEOPLE, need to pay attention and mobilize and regroup because apparently the Clampetts dont care about _______________ (fill in the blank).
yeah really its hard to imagine pictures like that, that shit is straight evil. and the times cover is pretty spooky too
Sweet…I never saw crash but this is the picture my ace painted for me.
I can’t say that I at all agree with you about the flick, but I’m probably biased. I live in the segregated land called LA, and I see the writers, producers, actors and musicians of Crash, at Church on Sundays, I’ve interacted with many of them and know their spiritual foundatin, which I have to take into consideration, but I liked your thought provoking post…
LM,
GEORGE CLOONEY is very upset that you don’t think he had the mind to construct this cogent essay. GEORGE is not some vapid Hollywood star that thinks that showing a film clip of HATTIE McDANIEL is how you diversify an awards presesentation.
Academia and a bum on the street have the same credibility to those of us that never graduated from high school. Entertainment personalities are the new leaders of society. Too bad RONALD RAYGUN couldn’t keep shit as real as GEORGE CLOONEY does.
“Never let the facts get in the way of the truth” – BEN FRANKLIN
Nice one. People need to recognize that it’s not all peaches and herb out here.
Powerful powerful commentary, can’t comment more right now because those images smooth fucked me up
God u got all that knowledge but still don’t understand that the whiteman is the devil. That’s not a racist statement actual fact. Then u said all races did devilish thing. That’s self hate but u don’t understand. Think about it. Black do devilish shit because we try to be like the devil hence the name dallas on a blackman(no dis) that gos 4 all u dudes walkin around wit the devil name. Those r your slavemasters name pass down thru generations. But socalled black and proud niggers still walk around wit massa’s name. Then turn around and give that name to you’re babys. The devil holds yall in mental slavery thru religion but yall don’t really know you’re story cause if u did you wouldn’t adhere to any of his belief system. Study that supreme math that the only way to free yourself. Oh I forgot the devil got yall thinkin we a religion or a gang. The devil a deciever god know that. Stop being fooled and find a god u know and ask him what this is really bout. You probaly ran across some five pretenders or jivepercenters who made u stereo type all of us. The whiteman is the devil and I don’t need clooney to verify that cause my father ALLAH told me the truth raw and simple.
@ dallas
U also said u don’t totally believe tha whiteman is the devil. What the fuc dat mean youb kinda believe the white man is devil. Well I don’t believe I know he is. Go to a dictionary and look that word up belief.believe and the root word of both belie. God learn the truth now and stop bullshittin. I’m sure whitefolk read you’re page but so what. The truth is just that. Peace
@ born
long before Clarence 13x created the 5percenter mythology my ancestors were sold to Europeans as chattle by other quote unquote Black people. These African slave traders had no concept of white/Black. All they knew was that there were these people in their neighborhoods that were new and defenseless. The people that were sold as slaves were Black folk from Canaan, Hebron, Samaria, Gaza and all of Judea. They were pushed into Sub Saharan and West Africa by the warring Arab clans from the east.
The fact tht my ancestors would end up as slaves was no mistake or stroke of bad fortune, it was divine. A promise from GOD centuries before that was delivered to the people in order for them to understand the rewards for thir faithfulness and the punishment for their disobedience. I will read to you a few verses from the book of DEVARIM (DEUTERONOMY)…
Chapter 28, Verse 32 :
Your sons and daughters will be given to a foreign nation while you look on and grieve for them in constant helplessness. A people whom you do not know will consume the fruit of your soil and of all your labor, and you will be oppressed and crushed at all times without cessation, until you are driven mad by what your eyes must look upon.
Ch 28, V 36 :
The LORD will bring you, and your king whom you have set over you, to a nation which you and your fathers have not known, and there you will serve strange gods of wood and stone, and will call forth amazement, reproach and barbed scorn from all the nations to which the LORD will lead you.
Ch 28, V 41 :
Though you beget sons and daughters, they will not remain with you, but will go into captivity.
Ch 28, V 43 :
The alien residing among you will rise higher and higher above you, while you sink lower and lower.
Ch 28, V 49 :
The LORD will raise up against you a nation from afar, from the end of the earth, that swoops down like an eagle, a nation whose tongue you do not understand, a nation of stern visage, that shows neither respect for the aged nor pity for the young.
There is no mention in this book of Black, nor white peoples because those are largely make believe terms created during a convention in Geneva in the 1300’s. After the execution of William Wallace the European nations realized how small their population was in terms of the entire planet and they would form a treatise not to war amongst themselves. The treatise would last essentially until World War I. By that time the system that we are a part of now would be fully entrenched.
So when I say that I don’t believe that the whiteman is the devil it is not to appease the (2) white folks that read my page, it is because I understand that the devil exists in all men (and women) including the people that I might find a tribal connection to. This post however, was about the system of supremacy and how it affects all of us directly and indirectly.
Peace.
@ dallas
Allah started the nation of clarence13x. That name clarence was given to him by a people who had a slave mentality(his parent). He’s chose a righteous name 4 his self. So if u still choose to call a blackman by a whitemans name that only shows where you’re mental is at. Even If u don’t understand that man is Allah and so am I. I’m here to show u truth that u god. When u deal wit religion u get lost. Now u bein found. If u wanna play I’m not wit it. Those verses u put explain exactly and u don’t even know it. That blacks bein bought here. Let me break it down since u don’t understand what knowin the knowledge Allah gave to me can free you’re mind. The first verse say you your sons and daughter will be given to another people. That talkin bout me and bein given to the whiteman. A nation u have not known shall eat the fruit of your labor. That’s talkin bout blacks workin 4 the devil allday,built this country an don’t have shit. Read the rest of that verse it talks about shit blacks know to well.
The second verse there u serve other gods. That’s talkin bout what 85% due they worship this so called god that the devil trick yall into doin. And statues and shit of that false nature. They tell u that u can’t see god but they got all thes images of some whiteboy to make u think that how jesus look. And don’t com wit the bullshit argument that there black picture of jesus to. Why did they put them fliks out there in the first place. U 85s don’t know that why he got u in control. Stop acting stupid god like u don’t know deep in you’re heart everything I’m sayin is true. The devil don’t want you to know who u are not me. Me and u are the same,blackman(GOD). The next verse says tho you begot sons and………………… That vers is talkin bout the chirldren stolen from their family. Its also symbolic to blacks bein took from the motherland, u get it god.
The next verse says the alien(whiteman)among you shall rise higher above u and you will come down lower. Now if u don’t understand who that talkin bout then I u just don’t wanna know.
The next verse the lord will bring a nation from against you……….. Then it say as swift as a eagle(americas symbol) who’s language u don’t understand. Read whut I said at least 3 time god so u can get a understanding cause the devil got u in a mental trap. Also all that shit about black havin slave is bulsshit . They just teachin u to always think that u the enemy. That like the black who say well the whiteman don’t do this to me an that to me its always the blackman. Stop hatin on yourself,u are god. Niggas say keep it real but believin. Peace god almighty
@born,
you still missing my point brother, but when we use the term Black to describe yourself, you have already submitted to another man’s description of who you are. GOD did not call you Black, but a man did.
You can’t tell me my history brother. The European COULD NOT have invaded Africa without the partnership of Africans. Africa was too raw and too real for his complexion or his immune system to handle. European niggas was falling to their knees with malaria and all sort of heat stroke soon as the touched the sand. That is why them niggas stayed on Gori Island and they let the Africans bring them the chattle.
Allah (Clarence 13x) used the picture of his pain to be a white man, but I know that every brother ain’t a brother cause a Black hand squeezed the trigger on Malcolm X and Huey Newton.
Peace
”You can’t tell me my history brother. The European COULD NOT have invaded Africa without the partnership of Africans. Africa was too raw and too real for his complexion or his immune system to handle.”
I was about to say that. The fake 5 percenter needs to step up his knowledge game.
I’ve thought about this essay for a while, because as a fan of this film I wanted to defend my own emotional attachment it. i wanted to defy the essay because I liked the movie and didn’t want to believe that I liked was racist.
But I think the 2 authors are missing a critical vignette that presents white privilege in all of its glory. The DA, Brendan Fraiser, has a black woman assistant, played by Nona Gaye. When Fraiser tries to rectify the situation of the carjacking, he suggests promoting a black man. You can see that his assistant is completely disgusted by the gesture but can not complain. She must do as told, or else she can not keep her job. When Grahm becomes promoted, not only did it shock him, but also the assistant that was asked to do the job.
my 2
@Born
DOOD wtf are you saying ENGLISH MOTHERFUKER do you speak it?? Get your illiterate ass to grade school and get some grammar and spelling clases maybe after that you’ll learn to express yourself correctly, and be able to understand what Dallas is saying. Plain and simple slavery was initiated by people in POWER, this power coming from being King or whatever, go back in the history books every race has done it. Egyptians owned Hebrews, Chinese slaved Japanese, English slaved the Scot’s, and they all were able to accomplish this by POWER owning the land that people lived in, or simply trade workers for money, land, armys etc. No different is the story with Africa it was sold out by its own people, people that were in power and owned the people that lived on their land and sold them to the white man for money, land, weapons to keep their power etc.
Maybe you’ve heard of a little story from a place called Rwanda, sad story it is, people turning on their own people just because of different background, but still the same race, and its all a struggle for POWER africans being betrayed by their own people just for POWER. Get it thru your head if there is control to be taken and money to be made someone always gets the short end of the stick, native americans, africans, latino have all suffered the consequence of a being at the receiving end of a bad deal. The Devil as you say is in all men who are seduced by POWER even blacks.