Nothing's New Under the Sun

The three times Oscar winning drama, from director and screenwriter Paul Haggis, Crash, is a movie based on issues of race and gender. The movie causes a group of strangers in Los Angeles to physically and emotionally collide. “Most of the stereotypes shown in the movie are still prevalent in American society. Haggis tries to make a point on how societies view themselves and others in the world based on there ethnicities; including Caucasians, African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and Persians (Lewiston).” This movie intertwines several different people’s lives, all different races, with different types of beliefs, and includes conflicts on both sides of the picture from cops and criminals to being rich or poor. Crash is set in the very diverse California, and the movie deals most of the racial biases and stereotypes the city of Los Angeles has to offer. “A stereotype is a simplified and/or standardized conception or image with specific meaning, often held in common by one group of people about another group. Stereotypes may be positive or negative in tone. A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the other group hold in common. (Agnes, page 632).” The more stereotypes change the more they stay the same under a different guise.

The first reference to "stereotype", in its modern, English use was in 1850, in the noun, meaning "image perpetuated without change" Stereotypes are generalizations, or assumptions that people make about the characteristics of all members of a group based on an image (often wrong) about what people in that group are like. For example, one study of stereotypes revealed

that Americans are generally considered to be friendly, generous, and tolerant, but also arrogant, impatient, and domineering. Asians, on the other hand, were expected to be smart and alert, but reserved. Clearly, not all Americans are friendly and generous; and not all Asians are smart. If you assume you know what a person is like, and don't look at each person as an individual, you are likely to make errors in your estimates of a person's character, and in the movie one may see everyone being ignorant and paranoid of the opposite race, religion, sexual orientation, or any number of other categories.

Stereotypes in the 1900’s are not much different from stereotypes today. Making Movies Black, the second volume of Thomas Cripps's definitive history of African-Americans in Hollywood, covers the period from World War II through the civil rights movement of the 1960s, examining this period through the prism of popular culture. It shows how movies anticipated and helped form America's changing ideas about race. Cripps contends that from the liberal rhetoric of the war years--marked as it was by the propaganda catchwords brotherhood and tolerance--came movies that defined a new African-American presence both in film and in American society at large. According to the article, Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality the idea of �race’ in the United States is based on physical characteristics and skin color and has played an essential part in shaping American society even before the nation's conception. The perception of black people has been closely tied to their place in the United States historically. In early American history, the primary reason for Africans in the colonies was the slave trade.” In the 1930's, studies found a high level of consistency among adjectives used to describe Black people. Furthermore, most of these adjectives were negative, and included terms such as superstitious, lazy, and ignorant. (Steele, 613-629).

Today’s stereotypes are not much different, and include unintelligent, loud, poor, unable to swim, and criminal. Current stereotypes of African Americans include athletic and musical/rhythmic. Many of the black stereotypes do not correspond with reality. Most black people are not poor and most of America's poor people