Newswise — A Purdue University professor says a popular Hollywood movie can teach important lessons about our attitudes toward race.
Rochelle Brock, an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction in Purdue's College of Education whose research focuses on race, ethnicity, class and gender, recently took her graduate-level students in a multicultural education class aimed primarily at teachers, to a showing of the movie "Crash," starring Sandra Bullock and Don Cheadle.
The movie follows a group of ethnically diverse strangers in Los Angeles - who are African-American, Asian, Middle Eastern, Latino and white and of varying socioeconomic classes - as their lives explosively collide after car crashes, a carjacking and a shooting of a police officer. Each character's preconceived notions and stereotypes about race and gender cause unneeded friction and misunderstanding as the movie unfolds.
Brock says the movie is an excellent example of the "convoluted nature of racism in America" and how everyone, regardless of background, carries stereotypes about anyone who is different. She said the characters in the movie are "not all good and not all bad," just like people in real life.
"All Americans have biases," she says, "and this movie helped students see the consequences of how those perceptions can affect their everyday lives."
The film prompted a lively discussion among her students - which included students from Japan, China, Africa, as well as African-Americans and Asian-Americans. Each got something different out of the movie, and saw pieces of themselves in each one of the characters, she says.
"The most important lesson the movie taught my students is also the main goal of my class," Brock says. "Learning to question everything - both ourselves and the world.
"Questioning is the first step, then you can seek out the answer."
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