Response Paper

Race Relations and Powerplay: Relating Texts

“It made her furious to think that this black animal had the right to complain against her, against the behavior of a white woman.”-Doris Lessing, The Grass is Singing

Racism, prejudice, and intergroup relations are hot topics addressed at length in a variety of media. Pop-culture often opens for discussion the issues of ethnocentrism with regard to the dominant forces in society and the pervasiveness of the master and slave relationship. The film Crash as written by Paul Haggis reveals and highlights a great deal of the themes brought into light by Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing. The two texts tie in themes of ethnic psychology, the allocation of power between race groups, and assumed White superiority.

In the field of social psychology, much of the continuing discussion revolves around the balance of power between race groups. I think the root of a lot of racial tension and conflict stems from an ethnocentric ideology that allows one group to feel entitled to power over another. Lessing writes that two of the farm wives, Mary and her neighbor, Mrs. Slatter, have little else to talk about besides their frustrations with natives:

“...Individual natives they might like, but as a genus, they loathe them. They loathe them to the point of neurosis. They never cease complaining about their unhappy lot, having to deal with natives who are so exasperatingly indifferent to the welfare of the white man, working only to please themselves. They had no idea of the dignity of labor, no idea of improving themselves by hard work.”(Lessing 82)

This quote is a prime example of ethnocentric attribution. Ethnocentric attribution is the phenomenon where “...failure and negative behaviors exhibited by an outgroup member are more likely to be attributed to internal, dispositional causes than the same negative behavior by an ingroup member (where it is more likely to be attributed to external or situation causes)”(Brewer and Miller 83). Essentially, this means that Mary and Mrs. Slatter attribute the dismal misfortune of natives to something intrinsic, that they bring negative outcomes upon themselves, while if the roles had been switched, they would attribute the quality of their lives to something situational that couldn’t be helped. The idea also works in the reverse, allowing the women to feel they had earned anything in their lives that was better than the natives’. This point of view is exhibited by many people with high prejudice levels and is one of the keys to intergroup discrimination and the allocation of worth, and thus power, in society.

Similarly, there is an argument in Crash between a Caucasian man and an African American woman that seems to demonstrate ethnocentric attribution. The man, John Ryan, is trying to earn compassion from the woman, Shaniqua Johnson. He explains that his father built his business from the ground up, employing an all Black staff. He goes on to say that after the city decided to give preference to minority owned businesses, his father lost everything. The character is attributing his father’s success to his own dedication and hard work, and his failure to outside influences. In the same sentence, he attributes the success of the minorities to the graciousness of his father, and the preference given to them by the city as a circumstantial force that they didn’t earn. The attribution of positive and negative qualities goes far to allocate wealth and power in society, and these two examples from pop-culture stand as prime examples for a lot of the human psychology behind this balance.

There is a running observation in popular culture that examines the complex structure of the master-slave relationship. This form of interaction is observable in almost any circle of society but seems to hold the most consequence in interracial interactions. Lessing’s character, Mary Turner, is the indirect employer of several servants and farmhands. She is almost tyrannical in her approach to managing them, which causes the servants to harbor a great deal of animosity towards her. The upset in the novel occurs when the master-slave relationship is disturbed. The two parties are so set in the nature of their interactions that they’re caught off guard when the balance shifts and chaos ensues. In the case of The Grass is Singing, the upset ends in Mary’s demise. 

Paul Haggis created a character in Crash named Jean Cabot. Mrs. Cabot is a wealthy White woman, married to the District Attorney of Los Angeles. She constantly relies on the services of minorities to clean her house, change her locks and wash her clothes. They never seem to be able to satisfy her wants, and she sees them as untrustworthy and incompetent. Towards the end of the movie she is explaining to a friend that she is in a chronic state of inexplicable anger. She falls down the stairs immediately after, and finds that her affluent White friends are unwilling to help, and it’s her Mexican housekeeper that ends up taking her to the hospital. In Mrs. Cabot’s final scene, she is shown crying on the shoulder of her housekeeper, who she admits is her best friend. In this instance, the inversion of the master-slave relationship results in a better understanding of both parties but it takes a dramatic event to initiate the shift.

Often times, racism seems like a fairly cut and dry issue. Overt racism is on the downturn, but we still witness racial tension and conflict. These events are the result of deeply embedded ethnocentrism and complex social structures. Pop-culture and the media have taken upon themselves the task of examining the subtleties of these issues over the years. The evolution and nature of intergroup relationships is represented well in both Doris Lessing's The Grass is Singing and Paul Haggis' Crash. The two texts critically consider the driving forces behind these radical interactions, the discovery of which is the first step to bettering them.

Works Cited

Brewer, Marilynn B. Intergroup relations. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Pub. Co., 1996.

Crash. Dir. Paul Haggis. Perf. Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock and Ludacris. DVD. Lions Gate Films, 2005.

Lessing, Doris. The Grass Is Singing. HarperCollins, 2008.