At one point… well, several points actually… during the movie Gran Torino I found myself to be the only one lauging when Mr. Kowalski (Clint Eastwood) made his racial jokes.
White audiences are like that. White audiences and suburbanite audiences are like that. They’re so appalled that they don’t see they’ve created the thing they abhor – or the thing they think they should abhor: racism.
The word “racism” is the biggest red herring I’ve ever seen in my life.
Chicago has won the misunderstood honor of being the most segregated city in the United States of America. No kidding, really?
Jeez, before you go waving around the race card could you just think for a second about history? Chicago has always been a town of neighborhoods where like-people live close together. It’s always been that way because this city is a city of immigrants.
People from other countries find their own people first. Then they figure out the language, get a job, figure out this country, save some money and then move to the suburbs where people are more mixed.
People who say, “Oh crap! Chicago is the most segregated city in America! That’s a problem!” don’t realize that the point or rather the problem sailed right by them unnoticed. The problem isn’t that Chicago is a city of neighborhoods.
The problem is that many of the neighborhoods in this city are filled with people who somehow disconnected from those of us who feel a sense of ownership and a sense of purpose & place in this town. The problem is that disconnection leads to violence and poverty and fear and conditions where children get killed and young people get swept up by the gangs and the drugs.
I know what I’m talking about because I get a first hand account of what happens in those neighborhoods every night from my brother. I know what I’m talking about because I’ve seen it first hand as a child growing up near the corner of Chicago Ave. & Pulaski and for that matter on the northwest side of Chicago.
Do you know why the Dan Ryan exists? Because Richard J. Daley wanted to keep black people out of his neighborhood. He built the biggest widest (fourteen lane) expressway that runs through any US city. And some people say he did it because he was a racist.
Well ok. But if you call it racism you gotta know that there’s no way to fix that condition.
I call it ignorance. I call it selfishness. I call it hateful.
I call it these things because these things can be fixed.
Ignorant people can be educted.
Selfish people can be shown the benefits of sharing and openness.
Hateful people can be brought to justice.
Racists are stuck in the downside of a binary state. How do you try to undo someone who is labeled a racist? Have you ever heard someone called a former-racist? a reformed racist?
So getting back to the movie: I laughed because honest to God it’s just plain funny to think that of all the things people waste their time with in this world it’s the way we look. Mr. Kowalski wasn’t saying any one race is better than another. He was saying we’re all in this. All of us. And if we look different on the outside than that’s just proof that God wants to have a little fun with us.
Any problems that arise because of the way we look… well, those are problems that we created for ourselves that we need to fix by ourselves. Mr. Kowalski didn’t have a problem with the way people looked. He had a problem with the things people (including himself) do.
