Racism is a form of oversimplification which doesn't help you understand people

Rating: 7/10 (25 November 2010)

We are initially given a one-sided glimpse into two white police officers. One is a rookie cop with a good head on his shoulders, and the other is an older cop with racist ideas. Initially, we are led to be unsympathetic to the racist cop due to his words and actions towards a black couple. As the story progresses to show certain sides of other characters, we are given glimpses into other aspects of the racist cop's life, asking us to reevaluate their opinions of him. Later on in the story he saves the life of the black woman he wronged at the beginning.
The rookie cop leaves the older cop cop because he doesn't like racism, then becomes something of a hero when he saves the life of the black man who is the husband of the woman. However, in the end, we see that even he is not totally without racism. Fearing for his life, an intense split-section decision based on racial ideas causes him to accidentally shoot and kill his black friend.
The story does similar things as it follows different characters of different races whose stories interlock. We are led to think in certain ways about characters and then later on presented with something contradictory to our first impressions about them, One flaw I see in the movie is what caused the rookie cop to suddenly have racist ideas. Did he have these ideas all along? Before we see his racist side in the end, the racist cop basically tells him to just wait until he's been working as a cop for a few years, and then he'll see that racism isn't totally unjustified. This could have been the seed that was planted that caused him to shoot his friend out of racism.
The message I got is that when you judge people by their race, you'll sometimes be right, but you'll also sometimes be wrong. It can also be an oversimplification to say that a person is a racist or a non-racist. Not all older people with seemingly racist ideas about people are pure evil, but overall racism does more harm than good, as is the case with all oversimplifications. These sometimes save a life, but more often they cost lives. Once you've oversimplified someone you've already misunderstood them. I like how the film presents the complexities of people and their racist thoughts, giving us the inside stories that we usually don't get that are necessary for understanding. The film does a good job with this for the white, black, Mexican, and Middle Eastern characters, but falls short when it comes to the Asian immigrants.