This post attempts to align Clint Eastwood's 2008 film, Gran Torino, with Hopson's (2023) model for overcoming (or beginning to overcome) racism / white supremacy in a modern-day post-pandemic society. I align Hopson's model with work that might be conducted in schools and with educators as a starting point to witnessing, acknowledging and understanding the power of racism / white supremacy. Gran Torino serves as an excellent example demonstrating a believable character coming to grips with his own stereotypes, prejudices and narcissism to see a community of Hmong refugees as individuals who he comes to care for and no longer view as a homogenized people. 

This film is about breaking down stereotypes and acknowledging deep-seated prejudice, racism and white supremacy and finally about unexpected friendships. In the character of Walt Kawalski, played by Clint Eastwood, the audience can see an excellent example of white narcissism, as Matias (2016) explains "the narcissist will further socialize his identity by finding and validating histories, media, topics, and discourse patterns that hold him to high esteem. However, when he is confronted with language, images, and/or facts that contradict his self-assumed Elysian identity, he will either avoid, defend, or silence it" (p. 70). A narcissist needs control over others, and in the case of Walt Kawalski, a white male, he already has uneven power  over his poor Hmong neighbours. Matias states that a narcissist will take "absolute control by any means necessary ...Hence, narcissism becomes a powerful controlling element of the emotionality of whiteness; when applied to education, the impacts can be deleterious" (p. 77). Finally, Matias (2016) very bluntly but honestly, states white fragility regularly gets in the way of real change, particularly in the education realm. She explains, "there lies a truth that must be exposed, deconstructed, and honestly re-examined if we are to proclaim ourselves as antiracist teachers, racially-just teachers, or even socially-just teachers" (p. 69). Matias argues white fragility and the “narcissism of White men sustains colonial racism…[and] the emotionality of whiteness in education” (p. 74). As a White Canadian scholar, McLaren explains he attempts at being “a traitor to whiteness… if all whites are racists at some level, then we must struggle to become anti-racist racists” (Williams, 1999, n.p). It is Hopson’s model that might help us get there.

In his powerful 2023 paper, "The Work of Overcoming Racism/White Supremacy", Hopson intentionally uses the terms racism / white supremacy (and I will too) as it sits uncomfortably for many and that part is important. Hopson states racism / white supremacy are at the core of his country (USA), they are the "basic assumption of our nation. I suggest it is the root basic assumption of [which] operates at all levels of our society. It infects our psychological theories, and our esteemed theorists...It is the starting point, the root, of our way of thinking, behaving, and being. Racism / white supremacy is “baked into the bodies—and the lizard brains—of many Americans” (Menakem, 2017, p. 119). Despite this, we manage somehow to deny its power, except in extreme circumstances” (p. 325-326). This is where Hopson's model begins, with the notion of Denial in the existence of racism / white supremacy in our everyday lives. He explains whilst white supremacy is generally viewed as the very gross acts we are familiar with historically, he argues racism / white supremacy also consists of smaller acts. He states:

When only the grotesque events are considered racism, then
racism/white supremacy can be seen as an aberration rather than
the norm. We selectively ignore the mundane occasions of something
“impolite” or literally off-color; the “microaggressions,” the stubborn
structural barriers and banal procedural impediments to equity that
contribute to the atmosphere that makes the major outrages possible.
We remain ignorant of, and innocent, regarding the more pedestrian
moments of racism/white supremacy (p. 326). 

Hopson's model continues with three more stages. The second relates to moving away from impaired empathy which he describes as a “stubborn refusal by many to recognize the implications of the racialized inequities in plain view” (p. 328). On developing empathy, Hopson says one can move towards living with the shame of racism / white supremacy (phase three) as this experience “can prompt a shift from allegiance to one’s group identity, to solidarity with the human family” (p. 330). The model concludes with the acknowledgement of death (phase four), but more specifically is an individual's “mourning the loss of power, privilege, and position, confronting the death of our old familiar, well-ordered but unjust ways of being” (p. 330). Hopson explains this death requires real and tangible change from the individual: 

Change may involve no longer being silent at the dinner
table, or no longer overlooking the slip of the tongue. Change
involves the willingness to loosen old ties and idealizations of significant
others based on denial/selective inattention. The work in rooting
out America’s root basic assumption will involve mourning the loss of
power, privilege, and position, confronting the death of our old
familiar, well-ordered but unjust ways of being (p. 330).

Gran Torino brings each of Hopson’s stages to light in Techni-colour and I work through these below. I hope the reader might take away as I have the valuable lessons the researchers cited here have laboured over to work on their own racism / white supremacy. The next step would be to take those lessons bravely into the classroom.