Does anyone else feel "American History X" actually REINFORCED racial stereotypes?

Question

Here me out! This is supposed to be an anti neo-Nazi movie, and it gets so much praise for its message of "reform" and the "consequences" of racism, but if you look at the plot, it actually reinforces a lot of negative stereotypes about black people.

First off, Derek and Danny's firefighter father is killed by a black drug dealer while fighting a fire in a predominantly black neighborhood. This is the incident that ignites Derek's racist ideology.

FF a little. Three of the black men that Derek murders are Crips who after losing a basketball game to him, attempt to steal his car which belonged to his late father. Kind of hard to sympathize with such characters.

FF further into the film. Derek's brother Danny has now entered the life, but he never really commits any hate crimes in the film. Then in one scene, a White kid is getting beaten in the bathroom by three black kids, for allegedly snitching on one of them for cheating on a test. Danny stumbles onto the scene and one of the black kids starts talking smack. Danny blows smoke in his face, and the black kids leave the bathroom without further provocation.

This scene almost reminds me of "Birth of a Nation", with Danny being portrayed as a hero, coming to rescue a White kid from black thugs.

Anyways, the next day at school, the same black kid kills Danny (who is in the process of being reformed) for seemingly no reason other than the fact that he humiliated him.

Basically, every act of racism in the film has some sort of legitimate justification. So if this was meant to be an anti neo-Nazi film, it's the biggest epic fail in Hollywood history, because if anything, it reinforces negative stereotypes about black people and makes the neo-Nazis look like the good guys in this film.

I don't know. Do you guys agree with me?

avery58 · Answer

I haven't seen it so I can't really judge it but trust me Hollywood does almost nothing by mistake.

Were the producers black?

It reminds me of "Do the Right Thing" written, produced and directed by Spike Lee in the late 80's. Have you seen it?

The overall message of it is against racism, police brutality and stereotypes. And to be fair, it does show the hypocrisy at one point when the characters start dissing each other.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/VIhL6IOAfvw

But it also shows negative stereotypes. The end of the film concludes after one of the black characters "Radio Raheem" gets strangled to death by one of the white cops (I do think he used more force than was needed to get him off of Sal, it's not his place to call judgement and kill him) who get there after being called over an altercation at the local pizzeria in which Raheem tried to kill the owner Sal for breaking his boombox (Sal then goes on a rant and says the N word). Raheem had gone there to protest about Sal kicking him out for playing his boombox before, along with another character named Buggin Out who demanded that Sal put pictures of black athletes, artists, and figures on his wall of fame claiming his business operated in a black neighborhood but Sal refused saying it's was his pizzeria and only Italian Americans go up on his wall.

A crowd gathers and protests, and they look like they are about to go after the cops and Sal and his sons. Then "Mookie" (played by Spike Lee himself; the character worked as Sal's delivery guy) throws a trash can at the pizzeria and the crowd goes on to loot it. They almost looted a Korean man's business too, who had nothing to do with anything that happened, but someone from the crowd talks some sense into them.

Some say that Mookie threw the trash can to distract the crowd and save Sal and his son's but Spike Lee stated himself that this was not the case and that Mookie did it out of anger that his friend was killed (to be fair he also said that Sal had every right to choose who to put up on his wall).

I guess moral of the story is that no one was really innocent or perfect in this film but still it kind of enforced some negative stereotypes, especially with the looting.

Does anyone else feel "American History X" actually REINFORCED racial stereotypes?

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