A brilliant film emerged from these skirmishes – but its core insight still takes work to unpack. For generations, a persistent myth that black families were irreparably broken by sloth and hedonism had been perpetuated by US culture. Congress’s landmark 1965 Moynihan Report, for example, blamed persistent racial inequality not on stymied economic opportunity but on the “tangle of pathologies” within the black family. Later, politicians circulated stereotypes of checked-out “crackheads” and lazy “welfare queens” to tar black women as incubators of thugs, delinquents, and “superpredators”. American History X made the bold move of shifting the spotlight away from the maligned black family and on to the sphere of the white family, where it illuminated a domestic scene that was a fertile ground for incubating racist ideas.
This movie has a some seriously cringe-worthy moments in it. For instance, it blames the main character’s extremification on the actions of one black person - the white firefighter dad being shot by the (thoroughly stereotyped) black drug dealer - without addressing the fact that being extremified by that would necessitate pre-existing white supremacist beliefs on the part of the main character. And that’s just where it starts.
This movie pretty much does the opposite of what it purports to do. It’s basically liberal “non-racialism” that doesn’t challenge, queston or even acknowledge the existence of the very thing the current normalization of overt far-right ideology draws upon - the fundamental white supremacist ideology the US (and the rest of “western civilization”) was built upon.
without addressing the fact that being extremified by that would necessitate pre-existing white supremacist beliefs on the part of the main character
But they do explore that. They clearly show that he was already developing racist ideals influenced by his father even before the murder. The father’s death was just the tipping point.
They clearly show that he was already developing racist ideals
I don’t remember seeing that… I could be wrong - I saw it a long time ago and it’s not really a movie I’d return to. It simply doesn’t tell you anything useful about the far-right or the intimate connection it enjoys with the status quo we exist under.
I have never seen USian media that isn’t terrifically negligent when portraying the true nature of right-wing ideology - and I’m afraid I don’t see anything about this movie that makes it an exception.
The flashback where he’s eating dinner with his family and talks about his cool black teacher and his father goes on a racist tirade. It shoes the seeds of racism were put in him since he was a kid. The whole point of the scene is to show he didn’t just wake up hating blacks one day. It was a process that started home.
Anyway, I respect your opinion even if I don’t agree with it.
There was definitely a scene where they’re sitting at the dinner table and the father is railing against affirmative action because his department hired a black firefighter.
Yeah, someone’s forgetting the movie. Derek Vineyard’s dad was your classic closer white racist who had no problem dropping n-bombs at the table, and Derek was an impressionable teen at the time. And in the midst of this, his hero firefighter father is murdered, and Derek takes what can be construed as a realistic, however irrational, tack, by following his father’s words in an effort to determine why his father was murdered.
dad was your classic closer white racist who had no problem dropping n-bombs at the table
It seems people are still having a really hard time understanding the difference between personally-held bigotry and institutionalized white supremacism. Placing the blame on Vineyard’s father for his children’s white supremacist beliefs is exactly the liberal “non-racism” I was referring to - it protects institutionalized white supremacism by pretending that “racism” is merely “bad feels” perpetrated by those “other/uneducated/poor/non-liberal bad whites.”
Unfortunately - that is not how white supremacism works… and the movie completely ignores that.
Yes and the handmaid’s tale solidified it.
If you add a question mark to the end of your headline, do you sound like a non-committal ass?
No.
No. American History X was pretty on the mark for the state of the US in 1999.
Trump ‘telling it like it is’ and how he was going to make Mexico pay for the border wall were what brought all the racist scum out of the woodwork.
Political correctness gets a lot of flak, but what it did was raise the bar. If you have to be careful to call one group of students ‘first years’ and not ‘freshmen’, then you know damn well calling different ethnic groups slurs is not acceptable. The PC movement drove the racists further into the closet, and then Trump was a big dinner bell to bring that shit back out again.
This ^ Neo Nazis and Militia Groups were both very real threats in the 90s and American History X is very much a reflection of that.
The fact that things have gotten WORSE and the idea that a history program like “American History X” would be outright banned from being taught in certain states, is a failure of imagination.
I’m a 90s kid, and I haven’t watched American History X partially because of how uncomfortable I think it’ll make me feel. Seems like a culturally significant film, but not one people watch more than once.
I mean he definitely didn’t make it better, but I tend to associate the “racists coming out of the woodwork” moment with Obama getting elected. Which also corresponded with the increase in Internet usage. The racists suddenly weren’t confined to their small groups of like minded people wherever they lived, but connected to all the other dip shits who believe the same disgusting shit internationally.
