American History X Transcript-

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120586/synopsis

“American History X” is the story of a man named Derek Vinyard, a neo nazi white supremacist. The story tells a tale of a young man brought up as a racist by his father in California. During his teenage years is father was murdered by a black drug dealer while trying to put out a fire in the projects. Derek became increasingly resistance to any other races. After his father died Derek started a rise against everyone who he believed to be ruining his country and way of life. Derek was a very smart man and with combining intelligence, exuberance and poor ideas could get a large group of people to follow his every word. Derek takes his hatred to far one night as he kills two young black men for trying to steal his truck. While in prison he finds that any of his previous ideas were wrong and that in the real world the deciding matter is not the color of some ones skin but their character and loyalty. He meets other skinheads while in prison and joins their group, but somewhere along the way he finds that they are not actually true to their ideals and he turns his back on them. A black man that Derek works with ends up becoming close to Derek and helping him through his time alive, also his old principal starts remolding his mind through conversations and books. As Derek is released from prison he meets up with his brother and some old friends and attempts to fix the damage he had caused. His brother ends up paying the ultimate price for hatred in death at the hands of a black highschooler which he had taunted earlier. This movie relates to what has been discussed in class in a couple of ways. One way in particular is what Loewen wrote in chapter 4 of the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me”. Loewen says that any high school students are reading about history through white eyes, through the eyes of the white society throughout history instead of impartially. Derek in the movie was looking at other races as through his father’s eyes and the hateful eyes created by anger. Without realizing that all people are different Derek just believes that all blacks are sub human and do not deserve the respect of whites. He does not just believe that blacks are lower class citizens but any race aside from white protestant; Jews for instance are not equal. In the way in which our history books present information is putting emphasis on the trials and tribulations we as white people were subjected to, but the pain of other races and beliefs is not truly shown. Derek doesn’t seem to understand everything that other races has gone through and their struggles and just sees what he was taught. I believe this movie had an excellent message and helped in the fight against racism.