Reflection On The Movie "Crash"

The film Crash really opened my eyes to how much racism still exists in the United States, or how much blatant racism rather. I’ve know that there still exists racism because I see it everyday in jokes or what have you, but the whole serious political side of it was a little new  for me to see still existing. For instance when the head policemen, being African American, couldn’t say anything about the white cop that would physically violate African American women while on the job, for fear that he would have his job of 17 years taken away from him. Also the D.A. was afraid of saying that his vehicle was stolen, at gunpoint, by two African American men, because he felt that he would loose the African American vote in the up coming election, and wanted to go to the point of giving an African American a medal to show he still likes them. I’m sure that the city in which you are located in defiantly has an effect on the type of racism that you encounter, but this film showed that it is still a pretty big part of society as a whole.

Columbus: Hero or Villain?

For the past 500 years we’ve thought of Columbus as a heroic explorer who stumbled upon America as he was on a quest to find a western route to the Indies, nothing more, and nothing less, but now that perspective is beginning to shift. Accounts tell of Columbus doing unimaginable acts to thousands of innocent Indians, with the main quest being, you guessed it, gold. Everywhere you look you find a different perspective of Columbus’s journeys and conquest, some making him appear as a hero, others as a villain, but not all telling all sides of the story.

            When Columbus first landed in the America’s he and his men were greeted as gods by the local Indians, this being because they actually thought they were gods. They believed that the sailors flew down from heaven in their ships with “giant white wings” (sails) bearing gifts of jewelry and beautiful trinkets, so they equally covered the sailors in gifts. Bartoleme de Las Casas spoke of them being, by nature, the most humble, patient, and peaceable people he’d ever met. However, Columbus, being the explorer he was, immediately claimed everything he saw for the Spanish Crown, even the people that stood in front of him, because that was exactly how the Spaniards saw the Indians, as property. After the Indians realized where they stood in the minds of the explorers they quit being the kind hearted people they first were, and began to stand up against them, but this would, sadly, lead to their downfall.

               The first resentment from the Indians came when the explores demanded that they gave them all of their gold, but because they had so little even when they had given all of it up, it wasn’t enough for the greedy Spaniards. They began to “battle” with the Indians as their request for gold wasn’t being fulfilled, and they tore the natives up. Anyone who survived the fights were captured and handed out to all of the rich Spaniards, that had built plantations on the islands, as slaves, but due to the harsh working conditions they rarely survived long. Also as their gold quota wasn’t being met the Spaniards began to go around to all of the islands and go on slave raids, because they had to fill the boats back to Europe with something or possibly loss the funding for the trips to the new world. This plan backfired on them though because lots of the Indians would die during the voyage or would die soon after they were sold in Europe.

            However not all of the Indians met the same fate, but that doesn’t mean that what happened to them was any better. On one of the islands the Indians were visited by priests, were “converted”, and were given pictures of Christ and the Virgin Mary to pray to. The Indians, not understanding the purpose of these pictures, buried them in their crop fields hoping that their new gods would bring them a plentiful harvest, but this wasn’t taken to lightly with the soldiers. When they found out what the natives had done with the pictures they went, gathered them up, and burned them at the stake, punishing them for “disgracing” their God. As you probably guessed, the soldiers never asked for an explanation for why the natives did what they did. (Eduardo Galeano, Genesis) I’m sure this wasn’t the only instance where this happened but this is an instance that really stuck out in my head.

            After reading all of these horrific accounts I really started to wonder why in the world people still loved Columbus, until I found a text from a long time ago that told a child version of the story of Columbus. In a Lincoln Reader I read the story of Christopher Columbus and it sounded like a fairy tale compared to everything else I’d been reading. The part of the expedition when Columbus traded gifts with the Indians and then takes some back to Spain to show the King and Queen the book makes it sound like the Indians gave their gold away as soon as the explorers asked for it and some of them just volunteered to make the harrowing trip across the Atlantic to meet their new king and queen. The real story however is that the explorers fought the Indians for all the gold they had and then captured Indians to take back to Spain, most of which either died or came very near to by the time they made it back to Europe. But after all I have to remember that this story was taught to children and I probably would’ve been scared if I heard the real story as a young child.

            The only part that was missing in my head is how United States citizens actually came about loving Columbus so much, but I soon had a pretty good idea why. A couple years after the American Revolutionary War, everyone was longing for a national history and a national identity, and strangely all of the Revolutionary War heroes were reluctant to fill the position because being raised above others would be undemocratic, or so they believed. So people started to turn towards Columbus, because of how he found the new world, which led to others, like themselves, to escape the tyranny of Europe and go start a new life. The part of this process that puts a bad taste in my mouth is when Americans began to see Columbus as their real founding father, rather than all of the men who just risked their lives to make the United States of America.

            All of this being said, Columbus was just a visionary who sought to find an easier and cheaper route to the Indies, and just happen to run into this huge continent now called North, Central, and South America, and him doing what explorers did in that time period, claimed what he saw for Spain. Now that doesn’t excuse him from all of the horrible things he did to the natives, but the explorers that followed him were practically war lords so they made him look good. Columbus never got as low as a villain, but never quiet reached true hero status either, nonetheless he did discover the continent we live on today so he is almost a hero, but just a little short.

Caleb Darland