"No'm. Killed a nigger."
"Well it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt." -Quote from Huck Finn
- Mr. Pink: You kill anybody?
- Mr. White/Larry: A few cops.
- Mr. Pink: No real people?
- Mr. White/Larry: Just cops.
In the beginning of the movie, the criminals are introduced as normal, funny people. However it is in scenes such as this one later in the movie where the audience better understands how crazy these characters are. The obvious contradiction in both quotes is that cops are real people just as blacks are. In Reservoir Dogs the inclusion of this line points out that criminals like Mr. White and Mr. Pink don't think like normal people do. They have created a block in their mind, they can justify killing cops because they view it as a wholly different beast than killing innocent bystanders. In the same way, not thinking of blacks as people allows for them to be treated so poorly. Why should Mrs. Phelps feel remorse for the death of a black man? If she was allowed to feel remorse for that, she could possibly also come to feel guilty about the cruelty of slavery. The conclusion to be drawn here is that racism functions in the same way these criminals do, it warps reality to keep people from understanding fundamental truths. In this one line of dialogue in Huck Finn it is stated how even Mrs. Phelps, who is generally portrayed favorably, has fallen into this trap.
Allow me to play you out...
That quote from Huck Finn bothered me so much when I first read it, I reread it over and over, unwilling at first to except that a person could be so heartless and racist. When a person reaches a point - as many people did in the South, because they were brought up that way - where that person doesn't value the life of another person solely based on the color of the second person's skin, there is a major problem with the prejudiced thinker's psychological makeup. I think you're right about this prejudice allowing the racists to treat others poorly - the Southerners had to think in that twisted way, or their slavery-dependent lifestyle would have collapsed.
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