Analysis Of George M. Fredrickson's Four Models Of Ethnic Relations

George M. Fredrickson’s four models of ethnic relations, ethnic hierarchy, one-

way assimilation, cultural pluralism, and group separatism, are discussed in his text,

Models of American Ethnic Relations: A Historical Perspective. Ethnic hierarchy and

one-way assimilation are two of the four models that can clearly be seen in author David

Treuer’s novel From Rez Life: An Indian's Journey Through Reservation Life and

screenwriter Paul Haggis’ 2004 film Crash.

Fredrickson describes ethnic hierarchy to occur when a dominant group “has

claimed rights and privileges” that is “not to be fully shared with outsiders” that are

labeled as unqualified for “equal rights and full citizenship” (Fredrickson, 634). This type

of exclusion based on racial qualification

is a common theme in the 2004 film Crash.
Jean Cabot, played by Sandra Bullock, is a woman who feels entitled by her wealth.
Jean’s prejudice assumptions become exposed when she grasps onto her husband’s arm
after seeing two African American men approaching her (who then point a gun at her and
steal her car).

This single incident causes Jean to believe her prejudice assumptions are

now valid - not just against the entire African American race but all races that are unlike

her own. She has become a victim not only of carjacking but to ethnic hierarchy,

believing that “hierarchy [is] now exclusively based on color” (Fredrickson, 635) after

racially accusing a Mexican locksmith as “a gang member” with “prison tattoos” who

will “sell [their] keys to one of his gang banger friends the moment he is out [their] door”

(Crash, 11:08). Ethnic hierarchy is also apparent in From Rez Life: An Indian's Journey

Through Reservation Life on page 587 when author David Treuer writes of the Trail of

Tears. Native Americans in the 1820s and 1830s were removed from their land “in

Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Carolina” (Treuer, 587) because

falsely entitled American men who believed the American soil, as Fredrickson stated,

was “not to be fully shared with outsiders” (Fredrickson, 634). On page 587, Treuer goes

on to describe the Trail of Tears to be a symbol of “American injustice,

Indian-hating
presidents, paternalistic Supreme Court justices, and the Indians’ plight” showing an
adamant installation of ethnic hierarchy with the “distinction between...white and
nonwhite” (Fredrickson, 634).

One-way assimilation is another evident model of Fredrickson’s ethnic relations

that can be found in both the 2004 film Crash and the novel From Rez Life: An Indian's

Journey Through Reservation Life. In Models of American Ethnic Relations: A Historical

Perspective, George M. Fredrickson describes one-way assimilation as the expectation

forced on minorities “to conform as the price of admission to full and equal participation

in the society” (Fredrickson, 635). The goal of one-way assimilation is unity “but on

terms that presume the superiority, purity, and unchanging character of the dominant

culture” (Fredrickson, 635), or in more common terms - forced to “in every possible way

act and look like white people” (Fredrickson, 637). In the 2004 film Crash, the Persian

shop-owner father of Dorri, played by Bahar Soomekh, is hit with the pressure to

assimilate after receiving racial attacks. At 41:33 in the film Crash, Dorri’s mother says,

“Look what they wrote… They think we’re Arab… When did Persian become Arab?”

while scrubbing away at the racial Arab slurs written across their store walls.

This
concludes that the family owned store is disheveled not because they are Persian, but
merely because they are not Americans. David Treuer also writes of the one-way
assimilation that the Native Americans had to face in From Rez Life: An Indian's Journey
Through Reservation Life. Treuer writes that “Indians were subjected to a process of
‘Americanization’” which was “aimed at creating a uniform public body” (Treuer, 584).
The United States government “indeed spent millions of dollars and many years trying to
stamp out indigenous languages” of the Native Americans, especially through the Carlisle
Indian Industrial School (Treuer, 584). This Pennsylvanian government funded school
sought to “forcibly break the family bonds” to keep “Indians from coming civilized and
part of the American public” by stripping the identities of Native American children with
the removal of their religion, clothing, language, and even family given name (Treuer,
584). The Americans’ innocent portrayal of civilization was in fact cultural genocide in
disguise.
While both writers, David Treuer and Paul Haggis, are authors of differing
subjects and mediums (one in film and the other text), it does not prevent George M.
Fredrickson’s ethnic relations of ethnic hierarchy and one-way assimilation to be evident
in both their works. Ethnic hierarchy and one-way assimilation are two ethnic models that
play a pivotal role in author David Treuer’s novel From Rez Life: An Indian's Journey
Through Reservation Life and screenwriter Paul Haggis’ 2004 film Crash.