You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself*

This past weekend, I was finally able to see a widely praised movie called Crash that came out earlier this year. My mom even received one of those generic e-mails from Oprah.com encouraging people to see the movie, since the show itself was on hiatus for the summer.

In case you’ve seen the previews, the movie is not like any other standard police/detective type of film in that it features several interlocking stories that all illustrate how no one is really innocent of and from racism. As Sandra Bullock said on the DVD extras, the movie shows how “we’re not safe from others’ prejudices and we’re not safe from our own.” Some of it’s subtle, like her character grabbing her husband’s arm when she sees two young black males walking toward them, but most of it’s pretty blatant.

What’s unnerving is that you realize that some of your nastiest thoughts are right there on the screen – you know, the kind you might have when you’re really angry and someone else caused it. Oftentimes, the race thing is the first thing that comes to mind because it's, well, easy. Maybe we never actually say those things out loud, but to see it in the movie is a reminder that perhaps we aren’t as politically correct as we may think we are.

Interestingly, the movie boldly asserted that no person is completely resistent of the potential to say/do something racist, despite the fact that he/she may have just been a target of someone else’s antics. Matt Dillon’s character said something nasty to an African-American female, and when she was rear-ended at an intersection, she told the Asian female driver to “not speak to me unless you’re speaking American.”

This may be a little controversial, but another unusual aspect about this movie is that, for once, it showed that white people aren’t the only group that can be racist, as so much of our media likes to imply. Being in the minority here in Hawaii, I've had my fair share of experiences, along with others I know who've actually had ones that were even worse (though I must clarify that there are far more nice, friendly people here, as with any locale).

My point, as the movie also made, is that we are all the same on the inside and have the capability of being both good and evil. What is particularly frightening – and why this movie hits you to the core -- is that most of us, at some point, have had the desire to give in and take that dark road. And that’s okay if you'll admit it or not; just watch this movie and you’ll at least see what I mean.

*as quoted in the movie