General Gymnasium of the Catholic School Centre Bl.

Ivan Merz

Racism in American
History X
Seminar

Student:
Vanja Bara
Knezar

Teacher:
Nikolina
Banja Luka, 1.03.2016

Content:

-Introduction
-About the producer
-The movie
i) general overview
ii) synopsis

2
3
4

-Racism
-Conclusion
-Bibliography

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7
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Introduction
In this seminar work, I will write about the phenomenon of racism, specifically tied to the movie
American History X. Racism is a topic that is very much discussed today, especially because
of the refugee crisis that is gripping Europe. In my opinion, racism is not something we should
deem as taboo, but instead we should discuss with our fellow classmates. The movie I have
chosen portrays a great image on racism in modern times, and is very educational. As well as
teaching us an important lesson on racism, American History X is a legendary piece of
cinematography which is considered one of the most influential movies of all time. It tells us a
very personal story which we all can connect to on a personal basis, which allows us to really
involve ourselves in the story. I will also tackle the brief history of racism in general in the
United States

About the producer

Tony Kaye (born 8 July 1952) is a British director of films, music videos, advertisements, and
documentaries. Kaye was born in London, United Kingdom. He has made several well-known
music videos, including the video for "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum, which won a Grammy
Award, "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, "What God Wants" by Roger Waters, and
"Help Me" and "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash. Kaye is a six time Grammy
nominated music video director.
His feature film debut was American History X (1998), a drama about racism starring Edward
Norton and Edward Furlong. Kaye disowned the final cut of the film, as he did not approve of its
quality. He unsuccessfully attempted to have his name removed from the credits. The final cut
was critically lauded and Norton was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his
performance in the film.
Kaye's second feature, a documentary called Lake of Fire, was about the abortion debate in the
United States. It opened in Toronto in September 2006. The movie was shortlisted for an Oscar,
nominated for Best Documentary Film at the Independent Spirit Awards, the Chicago Film
Critics Association Awards, and the Satellite Awards. Lake of Fire took Kaye 18 years to make.
Kaye's third feature film, Black Water Transit (2010), starred Laurence Fishburne, Karl Urban,
Evan Ross, Brittany Snow, and Stephen Dorff. The film is unfinished as the production company
went bankrupt during the making.
Kaye's fourth feature film, Detachment (2011), starring his daughter Betty Kaye is a drama about
the decline of the education system in American high schools
On January 24th, 2016, Kaye announced on his Facebook that he will be directing Joe
Vinciguerra's screenplay, "Stranger Than The Wheel." The upcoming film features Shia LaBeouf
and potentially Alec Baldwin about a young man who revisits his past, and his relationship with
this abusive father.

As can be seen from his biography, we can conclude that this producer often tackled very
important issues of American society, like the one in the movie we are discussing. It is really
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important to realize the history of the producer to be able to fully understand the movie he
produced. It is obvious that the producer is very passionate about shedding light on burning
issues that are often dismissed and deemed unimportant, and he did this with racism in American
History X.

The movie
American History X is a drama film (with hints of a crime film) released in 1998. It was written
by David McKenna and produced by Tony Kaye. It stars a famous actor, Edward Norton, playing
the main character of Derek Vinyard, and famous child actor Edward Furlong, playing his
brother Danny Vinyard.
Synopsis:
A family of four lived in Venice Beach, Los Angeles consisting of two parents and two sons. The
father of the two sons, a firefighter, was openly racist towards the black people of America in his
lifetime, casting his beliefs on his two sons. His life ended when he was murdered by black drugdealers on his job. This sparked full blown racism which has been brewing for a long period of
time in the older brother, Derek. Derek proceeds to make a white supremacist group called
D.O.C. (Disciples of Christ) with his friends. The group engages in many criminal activities, like
robbing a supermarket store owned by Korean people and even torturing them. After a heated
argument with his mother and her new boyfriend, Derek is thrown out of his mothers house.
This is when things turn really violent, as Derek murders three black men who he caught trying
to steal his truck. This lands him in jail on a sentence of three years for voluntary manslaughter.
While in jail, he joins a white supremacist group. He later finds out that they do not truly believe
in the ideology they represent, and publicly rejects them, which results in him being raped by
them. This further widens the gap that Derek had with white supremacists. It is at this time that
Derek meats a black man, Lamont on his job. He was first reluctant to engage in conversation
with him, but he later finds out that they have a lot in common. However, he was now left to the
mercy of both the black gang and the white gang in prison. As he realized that the blacks,
as he called them, spared his life, his beliefs started transforming. As he was leaving prison, he
found out that the only reason why he managed to stay alive in prison was because of the black
man he became a friend with. This completely changed the way he thought and his outlook on
life.

Upon returning home, he found out that his younger brother was following his footsteps. As a
changed man, he did not like this. He crashed a neo-nazi party that Danny attended and openly
proclaimed that he and his brother will not be a part of the racist activities anymore. This was to
the major dislike of the younger brother Danny, as he and Derek were considered legends in the
nazi circles because of the murder of three black men by Derek.
Derek manages to calm down Danny and then proceeds to tell him his story from prison. This
story shocks Danny to the point that it changes his beliefs too. A really symbolic scene came
after this, when Danny and Derek took down all nazi memorabilia from Dannys room.
The movie ends with a black kid shooting young Danny in school and Derek crying over his
bleeding body. The last words in the movie are by young Danny, taken from his essay about his
brother Derek: "Hate is baggage. Life's too short to be pissed off all the time. It's just not worth
it."
The ending is one of the most emotional movie ending of all time. It is lauded and praised by
critics all over the world for the effect it has on its viewers. It raises really mixed feeling which I
will talk about in the next part of my seminar.

In my opinion, this is one of the best movies I have ever watched. It uses a non-linear way of
telling the story which gives us the whole story bit by bit in a nail-biting fashion. It is much more
than a simple educational film. It used a very personal story of two brothers fighting their way
through the temptation that is hatred to tell us a nation, and even world-wide problem. I would
like to believe that this movie moved at least one person to the point of forcing them to reevaluate their prejudice about race. If it has done this, than it has done its job.

Racism

It is pretty obvious that the main focus of the entire movie is racism. Racism is defined as the
belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race,
especially so as to distinguish it as inferior to another race, which leads to prejudice and
discrimination against someone of a different race.
The film specifies its focus on racism in the United States. As we surely all know, racism has
been one of the biggest issues that American society has faced since its founding and even
before. Since the colonial era of North America and the first migration of white people, all nonwhites have faced great discrimination, to the point of genocide by the Europeans. Alongside
pushing the natives out of their own land, slavery in the newly founded America laid rock-solid
foundations for the racism in America which is still greatly felt today.
Even though a lot of us think that racism is not in existence in America today, this is not correct.
If we think about it, formal racism (which means legal discrimination against certain races,
primarily black) was abolished a mere 60-70 years ago. I conclude that 60 years is not enough
time for people to stop thinking in a certain way which was prescribed by law just a little over
half a century ago.
The form of racism that is very much alive today is socio-economic racism against certain races.
The races most affected by racism today are African-Americans, Hispanic people and the Arabs.
Racism towards these races is reflected in racial disparities in wealth, poverty rates, housing
patterns, educational opportunities, unemployment rates, incarceration rates and more. I will now
describe why racism is still alive today, and why people worsen the problem by denying this fact.
I will use the example of wealth distribution to explain this.
The wealth gap is one of the biggest remaining signs of racism in America. There is an enormous
gap between the Asian and European Americans on one side, and African Americans on the
other. A lot of people contribute this gap to the apparent laziness of the African American
people, and saying they have equal opportunities to make money as other races. However, this is
not correct. The poor economic status of todays blacks is deeply rooted in the systematic racism
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they have faced throughout their history in America. Just 60 years ago, black people were denied
the same opportunities for education and employment. In many parts of the country, they were
not even allowed to own houses. And when you count in the fact about how recent this nationwide discrimination was, then you can really have a sense why the wealth gap is such a huge
issue today, and is a living reminder that racism still exists today.
However, the movie itself does not portray the picture of racism through a socio-economic
prism. Instead, it uses the most primitive nature of people and tells a story of racism on a
personal and violent basis rather than an institutional and economic basis.
During the movie, we find out that the father sadly imprinted his own racism and twisted sense
of reality on his two young, impressionable boys by openly speaking against black history and
black propaganda books. This specific scene of the fathers speech to the boys makes us realize
that most racists have had their mind already molded into a racist mindset in their childhood.
Parents use the fact that children are very impressionable to cast their own mindset on them. This
is why racism exists even today, even though formal racism has been abolished for quite some
time. People simply transfer their beliefs onto the younger generations, making some rotten
things like racism very hard to cure entirely. The racism of Derek only intensified when his
father was killed by black people. He used this secluded example of his father death to mark
every black person as lesser than him.
However, all is not bad, because the film tells us the rather optimistic story of a transformation. A
transformation of two brothers that have been tied by the tight grip of hatred. During his time in
prison, Derek finds out first hand, that not all black people, and even white people are the same.
He found out that even his own people, white people, treated him worse than the people of other
races. On the other side, the only person who accepted him and looked past his awful history was
indeed a black man, a man who saved his life. Derek used this experience to change his heart in a
good way.

The last scene of the movie tells us a more realistic story. I think that it signifies the fact that
racism will continue, no matter what. Even if the two brothers were not racist anymore, there
was a person who indeed was, and was even ready to kill for his beliefs.

Conclusion
I think this movie is great for a lot of reasons. I watched it for the first time for the same reason
most people watch movies, for entertainment. However, I got so much more out of it than just
entertainment. It changed my outlook on the world a lot. Even though the problem of racism
where I live is not so big (mostly because there is primarily one race), I still learned a lot about
myself and my society and the issue that we face, which is nationalism and xenophobia. Even
though racism and xenophobia is not the same thing, the same basic principles apply, and by
watching this film, I am sure that many people would re-evaluate their fears and prejudice.

Bibliography
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_History_X
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Kaye_%28director%29