Read Stephen King's interesting review of the Oscars in Entertainment Weekly here.

One of the best things about his article is the insightful comment from a reader called RobG about the treatment of racism in the movie Crash:

Crash was quite simply a racist movie. Why? Because it's message was that racism is all about relatively powerless people being mean to each other with things like a white person getting upset because a black person is named Shanequa. How absurd. A real movie dealing with real racism would have addressed how people of color are marginalized by society as a whole, by right wing politics, and by racist tax structures that make sure rich white kids go to great public schools while those in poor neighborhoods are falling apart. It would have addressed how 1/3 of young black men are somewhere in the penal system (prison, parole, etc). Black people referencing the Cosby Show? Maybe because that is the only portrayal of black people the white writer could think of. Crash is racist because it tries to say to white people that see all groups are racist too and that we just need to be nicer to each other and conveniently ignore the structural enforcers of racism.