Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Crash into a Ditch

I saw "Crash" over the weekend, and I'm not buying it. I don't believe people think that way, let alone verbalize their feelings in that manner. No way. I thought it was a pretty good movie, but it only scratches the surface of human interaction. There are a thousand and one possible responses to any one event, and race is not the default reaction, it is merely one possibility.

While everyone is hyper-sensitive when it comes to race, we are not so high-strung as to be trigger happy. The movie assumes that everyone's underlying feelings about race live just below the surface of our regular day-to-day interactions, and that any slight thing can set things off. In other words, race relations are like little atom bombs inside people's heads.

I still don't buy it. As strongly as I believe that people are more racist than they care to admit (and we all are), I think that we have evolved to the point where we have a decent amount of impulse control. We are all aware of our conduct in public, and we know how to keep our feelings in check. We also know that our daily interactions involve more than just color and ethnicity, but they also deal with class, gender, and religion. While I might get angry with the black girl at McDonald's for screwing up my order, her error isn't any worse than that committed by the white waitress who forgets to bring me a glass of water at a sit-down restaurant.

A few weeks ago, word got out the Oprah had been barred from entering the Hermes store in Paris because it had closed. The initial story was that she had been prevented from coming in because the store had experienced recent troubles with theft from North Africans, and Oprah looked suspicious enough that the salespeople refused to let her in. Then the story began to change and by the end of the week, Hermes had issued an apology and Oprah had decreed that she would dedicate an entire hour of her show to the experience. In a statement, she described this incident as her "crash" moment.

Please! As the story morphed from one day to the next, it was revealed that the salespeople immediately recognized Oprah, but still prevented her from entering because the store was closed (and had been for over 30 minutes) and there were preperations underway for a private event. So, she had not been turned away because of her race, it was just the normal course of business.

There have been countless times when I attempted to beat the clock to shop when I knew that a store was about to close. And my success has been about even--some days I make it in before the doors lock, other times, I have had the door slammed in my face. I don't take it as a racial slight because I realize that salespeople have lives, the store has hours, and I should have planned for an earlier arrival. The fact that I have strong intentions and money to shop are irrelevant because rules are rules.

But in Oprah's world, rules that are inconvenient should not apply to her. As the most recognizable black woman on the planet (and probably slightly more important that Condi Rice), she apparently felt that her need to shop trumped whatever need there was for the store to remain closed. Sure, as a woman of means she should be able to get her way, but not in every situation, even though she has enough money to demand otherwise.

If this were Martha Stewart, I believe that the store would have remained closed (but due to her hyper-efficiency, Martha would have arrived before the store closed). There is no racist implication, especially since the salespeople recognized her. The great asset to being Oprah Winfrey is that people always recognize you (just ask all those black women who get identified as Oprah by mistake).

The real truth is that like other rich and powerful people, Oprah doesn't like to be told no. The rest of us mortals deal with *no* on a regular basis, but to the rich, no is the ultimate affront. No is a denial of power; it is a snub. It is the proverbial finger in your eye. No is the most powerful little word in the world.

When the Queen of England tells her sons that she doesn't wish for them to get divorced, they ignore her and do it anyway. When the Pope told George W. not to go to war in Iraq, W ignored him and fired away. When Martha told the judge that she was not guilty and just wanted to go home to her lemon trees, the judge told her no and sent her off to jail. When Moses went to Pharoah and told him to let the Israelites go, Pharoah said no and woke up one morning to find his son dead. No happens, even to the greatest among us. When God told Adam not to eat the fruit of the forbidden tree, what did Adam do as soon as God wasn't looking? Oprah, welcome to the world of no.

Unfortunatly, Hermes acted cowardly and immediately issued mea culpas for their actions. No doubt, the employee who locked the door has been fired, and the watch Oprah intended to buy has already been delivered without her having to pay. By the time the "Crash" show airs in September, her studio audience will also receive a carload of gifts from Hermes.

If there is a lesson to derive from Oprah's experience or from the movie, it is that people *crash* into each other for a variety of reasons. The history of racism in this country and around the world certainly makes us more aware, so it stands to reason that people do everything they can to avoid each other on that basis. Thus, race doesn't propel us toward each other at any greater speed than anything else. In Oprah's case, her sense of entitlement collided head on with Hermes, which felt just as entitled as she did (after all, she can't possibly be the first rich person to make similar demands).

In the final analysis, we all crash, usually when we aren't paying attention. It happens when we let down our guard or take our eyes off the road. It is an inevitable part of life, but we recover, get back to our routines, and do our best to make better choices.

In the future, I think Oprah will now call ahead...

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