CVK
I highly recommend Derik Smith’s column in the Black Commentator on Crash. He really puts into words a lot of the things I felt about the movie, but couldn’t articulate. Actually, I’m a little jealous that I didn’t write this myself. Definitely click over to read the entire column, but here are some tidbits.

What meaning can audiences take from all this?  Well, it seems that Officer Ryan’s character is meant to demonstrate that even horrible racists are complexly formed: they love their fathers (sometimes they are racist because they love their fathers) and they are capable of very good deeds.  While Crash does not explicitly ask us to exonerate racists like Ryan, it certainly suggests that we should be more understanding of their flaws - even if they include sexual violence.  It seems that, upon finally reaching an era in which polite company forces most to acknowledge that racism is inexcusable regardless of circumstance, America’s favorite “race movie” is now asking us to temper our judgment of the embattled figure of the bigot…

However, while the possible motives of white racism are methodically explained through Officer Ryan’s monologue about his father, there is no painstaking apologia for the criminal lifestyle that Peter and Anthony have adopted.   At one point in the film, an exasperated white character does sum up the causes of black dereliction in ten and a half seconds: “I know all the sociological reasons why - per capita - eight times more black men are incarcerated than white men.  Schools are a disgrace, lack of opportunity, bias in judicial system, all that stuff.”  But, this hasty accounting insinuates that America’s systemic racism is old news, hardly worth mentioning and it stands in stark contrast to Officer Ryan’s careful description of “reverse discrimination.”…

Despite all the commentary suggesting that the movie is “hard-hitting” and “daring,” Crash too-often reinforces conservative thinking about race and fails to challenge racist narratives that are deep-seated in the American imagination. While it may be unrealistic to expect any Hollywood product to mount a truly radical critique of race-thinking in America, there should be room for such a critique in the conversation that has been stoked by the limited audacity of the Crash project.