Extra Credit

The movie American History X discusses how racism affects human lives. It mainly focuses on high school student Danny who is influenced on his Neo-Nazi brother Derek. After his father was claimed to be killed by a black person, Derek joins an organization of supremacist white people. In some flashbacks it is shown that his father was talking about how he hates black people in the dinner table. Cameron, chief of this supremacist movement convinced that what happened to his father was because of the racism caused by blacks in the area. After a while Derek became an idol for the other kids of this movement. One night he killed two black people who are trying to break in to his car and he arrested.

On the other hand, his little brother Danny admired him and he was hoping to be a part of this movement. He wrote ‘Mein Kampf – My Struggle written by Adolf Hitler based on his own experiences’ as his term paper. Principle Mr. Sweeney, he was black, found his paper offensive and he afraid that Danny was going to turn out like his older brother Derek. Mr. Sweeney asked him to write another term paper about his brother Derek due the next day in order the pass the class American History X. It was shown in movie that Danny was not intimidated by the black people and in bathroom scene he saved a white kid attacked by a bunch of black kids.

Derek found a Neo-Nazi group of prisoners and he was accepted by the group. Later on he saw that supremacist prisoners are paying to a non-white gang to keep them safe so Derek stopped seeing them. He also assigned to his laundry duty with a black prisoner and they become good friends. This made Neo-Nazi group angry and they raped Derek when he was taking a shower. By the help of Mr. Sweeney, who was Danny’s teacher and works for the government, he released from the prison and he saw that Cameron’s group grew even larger. In Derek’s welcome party, Derek went there to convince his brother Danny to stop being one of them, he told Cameron that he is quitting but when Cameron did not listen him, he punched him.

He saw that even his best friend and girlfriend were trying to shoot him; he took his brother and ran away. He explained Danny what happened him at prison. After listening the truth from his brother, Danny decided to quite too but in the following day he got shot by the black kid that he argued when he saved the white kid in the bathroom.

American History X is in top fifty movies in most of the charts. When I watched the movie La Haine in the class, I thought characters Vinz and Derek is so similar. They are both angry and they expressed their hate most likely the same. Both of the movies show how their character change over time. Also I saw a great similarity between Hubert and Derek’s black friend from prison (I believe his name was Lamont). They both helped their friend to be a better person. They have the same ideology of ‘violence brings more violence’ and I think his style and the way he approaches the situations with the same sense of humor. For example he was saying ‘I'm the most dangerous man in this prison. You know why? 'Cause I control the underwear’. Derek did not end up dying like Vinz did but I guess, feeling that his little brother got killed because of him is even a greater punishment. Both Vinz and Derek were coming from a poor neighborhood and what I think is people are looking for hopes if they don’t have one.