Adventures in Cultural Mistrust

On my boss's recommendation, I went to see Crash over the weekend. It's a pretty good movie, some stories stronger than others, and with a great cast except for Brendan Fraser, who was out of place as the Los Angeles DA. My boss said she liked how revealing it was about our prejudices and how we always prefer to see things in black and white. She has been through a lot of intolerance in her life; her husband was a political prisoner in Iran, and her own family disowned her for marrying a muslim. So you could say I was a little surprised this morning when I found myself explaining that no, I didn't think her colleague blew up at her and insulted her (which he definitely did in front of four people) because of his Jewish upbringing. And that no, I didn't think that the fact that three out of about 10 faculty members in our department were Jewish contibuted to the climate of machismo around here. I spent the rest of the morning looking for pendants with both Jewish and Christian imagery on them--unfortunately they're all really tacky. Maybe I'll just wear this baseball-themed St. Christopher's medal instead.