2006-03-18
'Crash,' the movie vs. race relations, the reality
What I find hillarious is that the depiction of race relations in Crash is hailed by those who claim that people who reject this view "can't understand because they're white" (for white objectors; they have different explanations for blacks who reject this view). Yet, surprise, the entire creative team of Crash is honkey! Tom, do you object to these crackers lecturing Nadir about racism in the US? Here's a black person who has my view of the film. He's a black person who lives in LA, the location of Crash. According to Nadir's ostensible view on such matters, only a black person in LA is qualified to to critique this guy's assessment!
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I thought you said this was written by a black person. It's written by Larry Elder! What a gip.
"Despite the 1992 riots, despite the horrific videotaped beating of Rodney King in 1991, 82 percent of black Angelenos approved of their local police in their own neighborhood."
What neighborhoods did they survey?
Larry Elder isn't black because he doesn't think the way that you proclaim that black people must think?
"In Cincinnati, from 1995 to 2001, the police killed 15 black men. Of the shootings, seven of the black men pointed, shot or struggled over a gun with the police, three threatened them with other instruments, one attempted to run down police with a car, and one officer was dragged 800 feet by a car and died. That leaves three police shootings arguably questionable. In all three cases, the officers involved were acquitted or cleared of wrongdoing."
I did a study on this in 2001. Of the three who threatened with "other instruments" one instrument was a brick. One of the others was a broom. The third was a knife. All of the suspects were shot dead.
Of the three "questionable" cases, one of the suspects died of strangulation while handcuffed in the backseat of a police cruiser. Yes, the cops strangled him. Another was Timothy Thomas whose death sparked the riots. He was shot while pulling up his beltless pants.
On March 15, just weeks before Thomas was killed, the American Civil Liberties Union and a local civil rights organization filed a suit in federal court charging that city officials had been complicit in what they described as a 30-year pattern of racial discrimination by police. The suit charged that officials have “tolerated, acquiesced in, ratified and been deliberately indifferent to practices by members of the CPD... of stopping African American citizens without reasonable suspicion of criminal activity” and subjecting them to abuse and violence.
I'm sure Elder believes blacks and the ACLU were just being "alarmist". But then the city exploded.
"As a result, the Cincinnati cops simply pulled back, became less proactive, more passive. This, after all, reduces the number of encounters with citizens, decreasing the likelihood that a Kweisi Mfume may charge some cop with police brutality. So this troubled area of Cincinnati known as Over-the-Rhine saw, within months, an increase in crime."
Which was still the wrong reaction. Just take a different attitude toward people. Treat them with respect instead of animosity. Don't just walk away. Fix the problem.
"The U.S. Justice Department releases surveys tracking prosecution and sentencing by race – and finds that black defendants are prosecuted, convicted and sentenced at rates slightly less than, or the same as, similarly charged white defendants."
Though blacks make up only 13% of the total population. Even using Elder's studies, if he provided the numbers, they would be disproportionate.
The joke about Larry Elder was a joke.
None of this has anything to do with the movie "Crash". I agree that some of the notions in the movie weren't completely accurate either. But Elder's argument wasn't one of them. Black folks have conversations about being stopped by the cops all the time.
Are we stopped and harrassed in all of our encounters with police? No, but the possibility is always there.
Stories of police brutality are so commonplace that many blacks from Detroit are afraid to come into the suburbs at night, just like some whites won't be caught in Detroit after sundown. Once the hockey or baseball game let's out, they are gone. And I just spoke with a guy who said he might come to Westland to record some music because that is business, but he wouldn't do so otherwise.
So the movie "Crash" demonstrates several possible encounters with police all of which are extraordinary, but all within the realm of possibility. The goal of the movie is to make us think and talk about it, which we are.
Is it compeletly real? No. It's a work of fiction. But it is based on possible real situations. Does that make it a bad movie? No.
========Nadir======
Though blacks make up only 13% of the total population. Even using Elder's studies, if he provided the numbers, they would be disproportionate.
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Elders's statistics are irrellevent to the fractions of whites and blacks in the population. Rather, they pertain to the likelihood that that a black or white defendant will get convicted, and if convicted, the sentance the convict will recieve.
His conclusions about Cincinatti are dubious because he doesn't justify who ascertained the circumstances of the blacks killed by cops. But one thing is clear: blacks who don't engage in criminal activity are among the safest and wealthiest people on earth, and very strongly tend to have no horrific experiances with police.
"But one thing is clear: blacks who don't engage in criminal activity are among the safest and wealthiest people on earth, and very strongly tend to have no horrific experiances with police."
The residents of Prince George's County, Maryland, the county with the richest black population in the nation, would probably disagree with you.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/metro/md/princegeorges/government/police/shootings/
Prince George's County police have shot and killed people at rates that exceed those of nearly any other large force in the nation.
Nadir: I am interested in reading those Washington post articles. However, all the links on that page are "expired."
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