The most obvious aspect to focus on from Driving Miss Daisy would be the racial one: With its portrayal of a congenial African-American man chauffeuring a crotchety, old white woman around town for several decades from 1948-1973, what is the film saying about race relations? In my opinion, though, this movie addresses much more than race. In fact, it contains a plethora of stereotypes and asks its characters–and its viewers–to navigate the murky waters of biases we often don’t even realize we possess.

The film begins with Miss Daisy attempting to back her car out of the garage. She ends up going through a hedge and into a neighbor’s yard, prompting her son Boolie to revoke her driving privileges and eventually hire her a driver, Hoke Colburn, a middle-aged African-American man who “needs a job.” That brief synopsis alone provides plenty of stereotypes to unpack. First, Daisy is supposed to be only 72 years old at the start of the movie. She’s in excellent health, and her mental acuity is higher than that of most of the other characters. Still, the film presents her as incapable of driving safely–whether that is because she lacks depth perception, needs new glasses, could use a crash course on how to drive the bulky car models of the late 1940s, or whatever. Common sense says, though, that with a little help she should be able to fix her hedge-crushing problem of backing down the driveway crookedly. But Boolie won’t hear of Daisy’s driving anymore; and with numerous protestations that he is a caring son, he makes other arrangements for her transportation–effectively limiting her freedom and placing her under his authority due to the stereotype of the aged. Certainly, as an “old” woman, Daisy is incapable of taking herself places and determining that she can safely do so.

Boolie himself, though, cannot escape the stereotypes of his economic/social/familial position. He loves his mother enough to visit her and care for her well-being, but he doesn’t often perform caring acts for her himself. He hires people to do them for him. In short, he uses his wealth as a substitute for his affections. Furthermore, his wife Florine seems to not be the sort of woman who would be attracted to Boolie. She appears much younger than he does, likes social soirees that it seems wouldn’t interest him, and might very well be Italian (more about ethnicity in a moment). Could Boolie perhaps have bought her love just as he buys his way out of actually helping his mother? Plus, Boolie and Florine have no children. When Hoke comes to Boolie’s office to interview for the position of being Daisy’s driver, he asks if Boolie has children. When Boolie answers in the negative, Hoke tries to casually ease any anxieties he may have caused in his potential boss by assuring him he is still young enough to remedy this omission. However, Boolie and Florine never have children, which is especially a bit odd in the 1950s.

Along with Daisy’s housekeeper/cook Idella, the other main character of color in the film, Hoke is clearly the premier object of the film’s preoccupation with racial inequality. Although Daisy is fond of Idella, the African-American woman is not portrayed as much more than the rich lady’s servant; and Idella’s round form, “yessums,” and sometimes sarcastic replies call up images of Gone with the Wind‘s Mammy–a beloved character who is nonetheless a product of racial stereotypes. The previously jobless Hoke also finds himself the victim of bias. Daisy accuses him of stealing from her pantry. Some white cops harass him about driving Daisy’s fancy car. Daisy assumes Hoke knows Martin Luther King, Jr. since they’re both black. Hoke purchases all of Daisy’s cast-off used cars when she buys new ones. And, of course, Hoke is Daisy’s driver, a position which places him at the whims of a white woman.

But here’s the big wrench in Driving Miss Daisy‘s racism dialogue: Daisy is Jewish. Keeping in mind that the movie opens in 1948, not too long after the close of World War II and the end of the Holocaust, the fact that the relationship between Daisy and Hoke doesn’t just revolve around her being white and him being black allows the film to again address a more complex issue than “just” race relations. Hoke has his own stereotypes of Jews: they’re rich and stingy. It’s true that Daisy is rich, and she definitely keeps tabs on her possessions, but both she and Hoke come to realize that her Jewishness and his blackness in the second half of the twentieth century actually bind them together more than pull them apart. On the way to her synagogue one morning, Hoke and Daisy find themselves in an annoying traffic jam. Daisy grows impatient as Hoke investigates the cause of the problem, which turns out to be that the synagogue has been bombed. The incident changes Daisy’s thinking about race and ethnicity a bit. Previously, she has insisted she is not prejudiced, even though she doesn’t seem to consider Hoke, Idella, and other African-Americans to be on the same level of humanity that she is on. But the bombing places her on their level. She now sees herself as a victim of hatred and prejudice and begins to sympathize with others who have experienced similar mistreatment.

The brief episode of the synagogue bombing changes Daisy–she’s still cantankerous, but she is more open to other people’s perspectives, as is evidenced by her attending a banquet at which Martin Luther King, Jr. is the featured speaker. The profundity of his message of unity and hope for a world in which people enjoy maiming and massacring those who are different from themselves strikes Daisy deeply; and while she doesn’t express her feelings openly to anyone for most of the film (spoiler alert!), her confession to Hoke that he is her best friend is pretty powerful. As dementia begins to encroach on Daisy’s mind, she starts becoming the old lady that Boolie has seen her as from the beginning. She can no longer consistently reason, cannot care for herself, and can certainly not drive. She reaches for and holds Hoke’s hand as she realizes two things: that she needs help and that she deeply cares for this man whose background and race are so different from her own.

For Me Then…

In her seemingly stereotypical old age at the end of the film, Daisy still doesn’t fit the mold. Neither do Boolie or Hoke, for that matter. Boolie drives Hoke, who is losing his eyesight, to visit Daisy in her retirement home in the movie’s final scene–a precursor of Green Book in which a white man chauffeurs a black man. At the end of their dinner, Daisy dismisses her son so she and her “best friend” Hoke can talk together. Hoke feeds her pie spoonful by spoonful. It is a sweet, tender image with which to close the film, and one that smashes stereotypes. Here are two people, white and black, Jew and Christian finding common ground in their shared humanity. Very quietly, Driving Miss Daisy tells its viewers that stereotypes–of the elderly, of different races, of social/economic classes–don’t matter. What does matter is how we treat each other and that we realize that each person has a role to play in and a contribution to make to this life. All people are valuable. And as Daisy and Hoke demonstrate, if we look past stereotypes, we can learn something from people who are different from us–and perhaps even form long-lasting friendships.