Prejudice and Stereotypes: The Movie 'Crash'
'Crash' brings out the various cultural and social differences that humans encounter in their day-to-day operations and depicts how these differences affect their instincts, impulses and the perspectives they hold about members of other groups. Prejudice and stereotyping come out as the drivers of perspective in today's society and are viewed as thoughts that everyone has felt at some point in time.
The movie begins with a Muslim man attempting to purchase a firearm from a store owned by a White Caucasian. The storeowner handles the customer with a negative attitude because of his religious background. The seller's negative attitude is triggered by the stereotypes he holds about Islam, which drive him to immediately associate his customer with the Islamic terror group Al-Qaeda -- through whose actions thousands of innocent Americans have lost their lives.
Prejudice has been in existence and has been a serious social concern for a long time. However, the issue ought not to be as significant in the twenty-first century with the high levels of education and information access the world enjoys today. The actions of a small group cannot be used to make judgment about an entire race or larger group.
Prejudice and stereotyping often lead people to make wrong judgments about other groups and can be a source of unnecessary conflict and unrest. I say this with a lot of confidence because I have a black friend (let us call him Allan) who has lived in Miami, Florida for a decade. Miami is one of the most culturally diverse towns in America and which I can, say for sure, ought to rank amongst the…
