Reviewing Movies

Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; revenge begets revenge. As a white boy growing up in an all-white community who did not see his first person of colour until he left home to go to university I do not claim to understand the motivation behind racial discrimination or the over-reaction it seems to engender. But then I hear that some spouses throw their china at one another and as a boy who grew up poor I cannot conceive of such wanton destruction. I remember Simcha Jacobovici’s 1991 movie Deadly Currents in which Lt. Kobi Motiv describes the use of gun fire to cool people down—I didn’t buy it then and I certainly don’t buy it now.

American History X tells the story of a working class family whose fireman father gets shot by blacks while fighting a fire. One of the wrongs perpetrated on poor white workmen in the South by slavery was the devaluation of the worth of their labour. Unless they became overseers there was no work for them as slave owners had their own “free” workforce. Educated house slave referred to them as poor white trash or crackers. Freeing the slaves only served to flood the job market with even more unskilled labourers.

We have all read the stories of disadvantaged white boys arguing that affirmative action programs discriminate against them by giving opportunities to people of colour with less skills and poorer grades. There may actually be something to the argument that illegal immigrants accept sub-grade wages and in so-doing deprive the working poor of jobs and better wages. Certainly I wouldn’t want the belligerent, car-jacking blacks portrayed in this movie for my neighbours nor would I choose to live anywhere near them.

This movie, however, is about economically challenged people who cannot afford to get out of that neighbourhood and the Neo-Nazis who prey on their discontent. The two brothers in this movie are by all accounts brilliant students not dumb white crackers; who just happen to find security and validation in a white supremacist organization. Theirs is a reaction to seeing their once white neighbourhood infiltrated by people who bring drugs, guns and violence to their schools; take over their playgrounds; make their streets unsafe to walk at night; and practise reverse discrimination when they take over local businesses. Whether we see it this way or not these white boys do and the actions they take bring them grief. Frustrated by the fact that police probably don’t enter his neighbourhood at night Derek Vinyard takes the law into his own hands and shoots to kill when blacks attempt to steal his car. Whether or not a man has the right to defend his castle it is the violence of his reaction that scares and lands him in jail.

It is ironic that the teacher who works to pull him through is black and the fellow inmate who saves his white ass in prison is also black. His salvation is giving up his hatred and prejudices; unfortunately the lesson comes too late to his brother Danny.