Best Picture is a 'Crash' Course in Racial Perceptions

"Crash" deservedly won the Academy award for best picture because it
forces blacks as well as whites to honestly confront their stereotypes.

The film sets the course from the start when it goes squarely for "racial correctness." The opening shot has two young blacks charging out of a restaurant steaming mad. One of them claims that a waitress ignored them, then gave them lousy service, and the whites in the restaurant gave them hostile stares solely because they were black.

Then a white couple passes them on the street, and the wife locks arms with her husband for fear the two men would mug them. In an angry tirade, the angered young black covers the wide gamut of myths, stereotypes and negative perceptions that whites supposedly have of blacks.

While "Crash" pierces and pokes fun at racial stereotypes, it's the black
perceptions about those stereotypes that makes the film unique. Many blacks take it as an article of faith that that most whites are hopelessly racist. A comprehensive Harvard University opinion poll in 2002 found that the racial attitudes of many whites about blacks are tightly wrapped in stereotypes. The poll reinforced the fervent belief of many blacks that whites racially disdain them. It's not that simple.

The majority of whites are probably genuinely convinced that America is a color-blind society, and that equal opportunity is a reality. They repeatedly told the Harvard pollsters that they believed blacks and whites had attained social and economic equality. Sure, the figures on income, education and health care show a gaping racial lag between blacks and whites. However, perception drives reality.

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