Crash

I just wanted to start out by saying I'm obsessed with this movie, it was definitely on the intense side, but it was so good and really made me think. Anyways. There were a lot of examples of both implicit and explicit racism in the movie. The Sandra Bullock character clearly demonstrates both. She later admit that she felt afraid when she saw the two black men approaching her, but she didn't want to act upon that fear because then she would be a racist. But because she later felt like she should have done something, she is explicitly racist towards the man who was redoing her locks and she was sure he must be a gang member because he was Mexican. The Iranian man also assumes the same man cheated him probably also because he was Mexican. However, the gun shop owner is explicitly racist towards the Iranian man and basically calls him a terrorist.Another example of implicit racism is when the cop Tommy picks up the black hitch-hiker. It's obvious that Tommy is trying so hard not to be racist, but deep down we know he was scared because he assumed the black man had a gun and ended up shooting him. I could go on and on with examples from the movie, but I think you get the point. Although I think explicit racism is always worse than implicit because the overtness of it just hurts feelings of others, implicit can sometimes be just as bad. Like I said before, Tommy wasn't explicitly racist, but his implicit racism caused him to shoot the man. I think all of us have some implicit racism and it's not really something we can control. Our society taught us that white people are "good". I was really surprised to watch on Oprah that a black woman even felt safer with white people. I hate to say it, but I know a part of me implicitly racist even though I wish it weren't true.

Race

This week in class we talked about how racism isn't biological, it's more of a social construction. I never really thought about this way, but it's definitley true. People can not all fit into neat categories, just like it was impossible to group the different balls into three categories when Sal started to add more- it simply didn't work. Many people, especially in America are not just simply black or white or asian - we're a mixture of races. Although my family is completely European-American on both sides, it's still hard for me to classify myself because my family's mixture of religions - which I consider a component of race. I was raised Jewish, but only my mom is Jewish and my dad is not. Everybody is so shocked to hear that I'm Jewish because I don't have a Jewish last name and I resemble my dad so I don't have the stereotypical Jewish traits. I always explain by saying I'm half Jewish, but that's not really true, it's the only religion I've ever practiced. These things have altered society's perception for what I "should" be. Just like race, religion is not biological and we should not categorize people by simply looking at them.

Monopoly & Minimum Wage

When we played Monopoly in class yesterday, I was unlucky and was put in the lower-middle class. I know this game is not a perfect representation of society, but if it's anywhere close- being poor sucks! It seemd that roll after roll I was just owing the the richer people money. It was even worse for the lower class person. She ended up over $700 in debt. She didn't buy a lot of property or anything, but she just seemed to lose hundreds of dollars each turn. The worst part of  this was the high class person kept getting richer and richer - it was crazy and totally unfair. It was like the rich have so much control and the poor have none and we just had to sit there helplessly while we lost more money. In addition to this, the 30 days episode on living on minumum wage was also an eye-opener. I can't imagine living on only that money. I make a little over minimum wage as a lifeguard and I certainly could not survive on only that. The part that really stuck out to me was when Morgan said there were so many times he was hungry and he couldn't afford to buy anything. I'm so used to just buying food if I'm hungry- or even if I'm really not. I don't even think about it, it usually costs less than $5 but I guess that adds up. If they can't even afford fast food, what can they afford?