March 2006

Let's start with the European American police officer played by Matt Dillon, who sexually assaults an African American woman (Thandie Newton) in front of her husband in order to humiliate both.

The officer is known by his colleagues to be "a racist prick," and we see abundant examples of this. He later, in the line of duty, risks his life to pull that same woman from a burning car, which may be screenwriter Paul Haggis' way of alerting us to complexity: pay attention; this person's story may teach us something.

The officer actually tells a key part of his story, to the black HMO worker where he is seeking assistance for his sick father. It's hard to hear his story, laced as it is with racist insults directed toward her. It seems that his dad was a janitor with an entrepreneurial streak, who created his own company to provide janitorial services. The dad hired mostly black people, paid them equally with whites, and made a success of the business that focussed on cleaning city buildings. The city government then adopted an affirmative action policy of shifting contracts to minority-owned firms. The dad lost everything, and now he's too old and sick to get a janitor's job. The son believes his dad has prostate cancer, but is unable to get help from the U.S. health care system. The father lives with the son, who loses sleep while trying to ease his dad's misery.

And so this year's Oscar-winner tells a very old story indeed: class society maintains itself through divide-and-rule. Set people of color and working class whites against each other, in today's Los Angeles or the Alabama of a century ago, and class privilege is preserved. For that matter, set native-born workers in nineteenth century New England mill towns against immigrant workers - whites, from Europe - and the mill owners stay on top. Or set white male veterans returning from World War II against white women who were doing their jobs while they're away, and powerholders once again get to avoid questions of social policy and economic justice. Sexism and racism, powerful in their own right, are exacerbated and used by class society to maintain itself.

Because this is a movie about connections, some of the most painful moments in Crash show classism and racism supporting each other in people's personal lives. The outrageously racist white police officer is protected in his job by his black supervisor, for example, who believes he would risk his own career by firing the racist. The African American film director - another middle class man -- tells a black actor to dumb down his character to make him "more believably black."

Crash shows a second strategy for class dominance

These scenes of black participation in enforcing racism brings us to another major strategy through which class society maintains itself. Talented and ambitious members of an oppressed group need to be assimilated; some portion of them need to buy into the larger game plan of class society.

The first time I saw Crash I didn't understand why it was so important to the white producer to force the black director to dumb down the black movie character. What were the stakes? Why raise the issue to the level of the director's reputation and future employability? The stakes were assimilation. The black director was either going to accept his role (the role of middle class people is to manage the working class), or be punished. He needed to get with the program, or the word would get around among the (white) people who employ directors.

The director's wife was unable to empathize with her man's existential crisis, precipitated by their humiliation at the hands of the white police. In their frustration and shame after the assault, the couple trade charges of insufficient blackness, and we hear not only about their identity fears but also their class roots: he "learned to be black by watching the Cosby show" while she went to equestrian school. Her defiant conduct when they were stopped came from a place of upper class entitlement. (What a harsh way to learn that class privilege doesn't always protect against racism!) But, sadly, her class background makes it difficult for her to break out of her self-absorption to see the meat grinder that her upwardly mobile husband is going through. (While, across town, the self-absorption of her rich white sister - the District Attorney's wife - has its own bleak consequences.)

The price of assimilation, Crash implies, is high, even if the assimilation is psychological and not matched by upward mobility. The car-jacking younger brother of the black detective played by Don Cheadle willfully insists on denying the deadly nature of racism; he cultivates an affection for white country music, portrays his partner's racial politics as too cynical, fails to notice the rising racist fears in the white man who is giving him a ride. His naivete leads to his death. The movie director, by contrast, harbors no such illusions. He lives in daily pain - but he lives.

Assimilation of the few stabilizes the system by encouraging those who do not move up to regard themselves as losers. " If I'm not Bill Cosby, I must not [personally] have what it takes." The role of middle class people, especially professionals like teachers, is critical in this process. It's the job of middle class people to do the screening and sorting, to administer the rewards, and to reinforce the self-image of "loser" in those not chosen. The status quo benefits, since people with low self-esteem make poor revolutionaries. Class society is also assisted by the sheer talent of "the best and brightest" - or, at least those of the best and brightest who are willing to play that game.

It's not easy to persuade middle class people to do their job of managing the working class in the interests of the owning class, even though they might be paid well to do it. For one thing, middle class people are given better education and encouraged to think for themselves. They might start questioning the system. Further, there's the simple human capacity to experience compassion. Many middle class people might balk at slicing and dicing other human beings. Therefore, at least two ideological pieces are needed to maintain compliance among middle class people: individualism and scarcity.

Individualism is the belief that self should trump community, based on the false belief that there is an inherent tension between the individual and the group. The focus on individuals-out-of-context means that we can safely ignore roots, relationships, socializing influences, community anchors, and therefore pretend not to notice the huge impact of group identifications.

Managing and training people as a collection of individuals is far, far, easier than seeing them properly in their context. Almost the entire field of education of children is based on the proposition that children can be reduced to their individual level, which thereby prepares them for becoming interchangeable parts in giant organizations that employ them and sell to them. Individualism is such a dominant ideology that it is rarely questioned by middle class people (where it is held most strongly), and it keeps issues like cultural groupings nicely off the agenda. If anything, individualism encourages educators and others to believe they are doing the downtrodden a favor by lifting them out of their communities and severing them from their roots.

The second ideological piece is scarcity: "entire communities of people cannot achieve economic well-being, so the best we can do is to assist 'the deserving.'" That poverty is inevitable is a fundamental, although wrong, belief, and nearly everyone in the U.S. shares it.

Those who don't believe poverty is inevitable are free to notice that some societies have given up poverty and included everyone in economic well-being, NOT through individual attention, but through universal programs (full employment, universal healthcare, quality education, massive quality public housing, etc. etc.). Scarcity is largely the result of choices made by powerholders. The International Monetary Fund's advice to New Zealand, which had a full employment economy in 1972, was to create unemployment! Class society does best when a population feels the chilling anxiety of scarcity. The people must therefore be told that poverty comes from God/the Market, rather than from choices made by powerholders.

Is this why the last redemptive scene in Crash is that of the car jacker played by Ludacris? He decides to act from the abundance of his own, politicized, sense of freedom, and chooses therefore to free the captives?