Sociological Concepts In The Movie Crash

2. In the movie crash, there are some concepts that I could refer to from scenes in the movie. (1) Stigma is a term used to describe the labels society uses to devalue members of certain social groups (Schaefer). Sandra Bullock’s character is frightened when she’s walking to the car with her husband and two black guys are walking towards them. Her character shows that people are frightened when they are around black people in fear of getting robbed. She uses the stigma that all black men are robbers. Turns out they did high jack their car, but not all black people are like that. Her character also assumes the Hispanic guy who is changing her locks to her house is a gang banger. She assumes that because he’s Hispanic and has a lot of tattoos. Society assumes that someone with a lot of tattoos on their body is a gang banger without really knowing a person. She devalues both the black guys and the Hispanic guy because of how society looks at them. (2) Obedience is compliance with higher authorities in a hierarchical structure (Schaefer).

Differential association tell us when deviant behavior is tolerated (not sanctioned), more deviant behavior is likely to happen (Schaefer). The two black guys that highjacked cars for a living. They never got punished for doing it, so they continued to do it. They never had an encounter with police officers to reinforce a negative sanction. The police officer’s behavior was tolerated by the married couple because the husband knew that nothing would’ve been done if they did call and report him. Throughout the movie, he treated minorities in an unfair way and he would get away with it. He was not punished for his behavior. Karma did come back when he had to save the woman he molested. Since no sanctioned his behavior, he just kept treating minorities