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Derek Vinyard
Derek Vinyard
Played By: Edward Norton
- The Ace: For all the horrible choices he makes, Derek is good at many things, including basketball and school. He is also charismatic, articulate, and no slouch in a fight.
- The Atoner: After prison, he has abandoned his racist ways, and tries to make sure that Danny won't follow in his footsteps.
- Ax-Crazy: He became increasingly violent after becoming a Neo-Nazi, culminating in the curb-stomping of those gangbangers.
- Bald of Evil: He had his head shaved while he was a member of the D.O.C. but grew his hair back when he gave up his ideology.
- Berserk Button: Derek's dead father is a major one for him. So when some gangbangers steal his dad's car, there was only one way it was going to end.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Before his change into Neo-Nazism and after his change from it, he's shown to be a Nice Guy. Don't mistake his change as weakness, as he personally kicks the shit out of Cameron for threatening to make Danny a Dark Messiah like him.
- Broken Ace: Derek was emotionally devastated by the loss of his father, which he's dealing with by holding every non-white person on the planet responsible. Meaning all of his intelligence, knowledge, and athletic ability is being wasted on being a Neo-Nazi thug.
- Commonality Connection: Dr. Sweeney is, like Derek, an intellectually gifted man who wasted his youth on his anger. He is able to use that fact to finally reach Derek when they meet in prison.Derek: What do you know about the place I'm in?Sweeney: There was a moment when I used to blame everything and everyone for all the pain and suffering and vile things that happened to me; that I saw happen to my people. I used to blame everybody. Blame white people. Blame society. Blame God. I didn't get no answers because I was asking the wrong questions.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The harrowing opener, wherein Derek kills two guys who are trying to break into his truck, Disproportionate Retribution to the basketball game they lost earlier. He even literally curb-stomps one of them.
- Dark Messiah: Due to his charisma and physical prowess, the other white supremacists idolized him.
- Disproportionate Retribution: The death of his father at the hands of black drug dealers inspires Derek to avenge his death through white supremacy.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Derek may be a violent, racist jerkass, but he deeply resents being compared to a low-rent outfit like the KKK.
- Freudian Excuse: The death of his father at the hands of African-American gangbangers is what cemented his prejudice towards non-whites. His father, however, was also spouting some bigoted attitudes that influenced him.
- Genius Bruiser: He was a brilliant student in high school and during his time as a neo-nazi, he showed himself to be an extremely intelligent and charismatic speaker in addition to being an extremely muscular and imposing figure.
- Heel–Face Turn: He gives up his ideology while serving time in prison as he was raped by a white supremacist gang and he befriended a black inmate who challenged his beliefs by asking if they made his life any better.
- Ignored Epiphany: If one takes the deleted ending as canon, then it's implied by Derek shaving his hair off once more after Danny's death.
- Important Haircut: Played straight when he goes skinhead and inverted when he allows his hair to grow in prison. Zigzagged in the deleted ending when he shaves it again, after Danny is murdered by a black gangbanger.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Derek is a violent racist, but an intelligent one.
- It's hard to argue his point about the Rodney King case, in that the video was cleverly edited not to show the high speed chase or King's impaired driving.
- Likewise, both Derek and Dennis' points reflect a common working-class mentality toward the poor—for this reason, they are more sympathetic as sides of an issue than simple political Strawmen.
- Knight Templar: Derek believes that he's cleaning up the worst elements of his neighborhood and calling others to a cause, but he does so through racism and violence.
- Manly Tears: He breaks down in tears when he discovers that Danny was murdered by another student and he cries after being raped in prison.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When he finds Danny dead in the bathroom, he sobs, "What did I do?!"
- The Only Believer: Derek learns the hard way that the Aryan Brotherhood is just another prison gang, with barely any commitment to their ideology and whose only interest is in selling drugs. He's the only actually committed Neo-Nazi among them, which quickly alienates the rest of the gang.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He was a white supremacist who blamed non-whites for his father's death and for ruining America.
- Prison Rape: He's raped by the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood for questioning their loyalty to the supremacist ideology.
- Rape as Drama: After being raped by the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, he commits to atoning and vows to save Danny from that lifestyle.
- Revenge Myopia: His father was killed by black drug dealers, however, Derek becomes a Neo-Nazi to avenge him by opposing all minorities, not just his father's killers.
- Slasher Smile: When he's arrested, the grin on Derek's face will haunt your nightmares.
- Stop Worshipping Me: After he reforms and is released from prison, he's horrified and sickened to discover that he's still idolized by the white supremacist D.O.C. gang for his previous vile actions.
- Straight Edge Evil: Derek is athletic and employed, gets good grades, and calls out one of his gang mates for smoking pot, because that's what "the enemy" does. In prison, this backfires, as his hostility to the Aryans' participation in the drug trade with Black and Latino gangs eventually puts him on the outs with them.
- Treachery Is a Special Kind of Evil: He fully turns against Cameron when he finds out that he sold out two members of his gang, establishing that he doesn't even care about race when his skin is on the line.
- Villain Protagonist: Prior to his Heel–Face Turn.
Danny Vinyard
Danny Vinyard
Played By: Edward Furlong
- Big Brother Worship: He idolized Derek and joins the D.O.C to Derek's horror. After realizing that Derek has abandoned his racist ideology and hearing about Derek's experience in prison, he pretty much instantly drops his own racist beliefs, showing how much of an influence Derek is on him.
- Blatant Lies: Tries to pretend that Derek had no influence on him and his beliefs when probed on it by Sweeney, but it quickly becomes clear that Derek was the main influence on his ideology, and Danny instantly follows Derek out of the Neo-Nazi lifestyle later that day.
- Broken Ace: Like Derek, he's a brilliant student but his intellect has been wasted in support of a toxic ideology integrated into him by a callous manipulator.
- Broken Pedestal: Danny's in tears when he discovers that Derek's abandoned his old ways. It quickly gets rebuilt when Derek gives him the full story of what happened to him in prison.
- Deuteragonist: Plays the second lead behind his brother. The film presents him through a narration point, as it also involves him writing an essay about Derek and their past.
- Died in Your Arms Tonight: After being shot by Little Henry, dies in Derek's arms.
- First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Danny's school assignment frames the movie, so he's narrating the whole thing. However, Derek is the main focus of the story.
- The Gadfly: Writes a book report on Mein Kampf just to needle his jewish history teacher.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Gets shot to death no less than a day after renouncing Neo-Nazism.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: At the start of the film, he's a smarmy little git who blows smoke in someone's face. Things get better as we get to know Danny and his circumstances, including his consideration for his family and the revelations that he's not really that racist, but mimicking his older brother. Notably, he quickly drops his own racism as soon as Derek does.
- Loophole Abuse: How the movie starts out. His history teacher assigns him to write a paper on any book related to the Civil Rights struggle. Naturally, Danny chooses Mein Kampf.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Ends up getting killed, not because he did anything racist, but because he drove off a school bully who was beating up another student in the bathroom.
- Pet the Dog: As much of a shit as he can be, he adores his little sister Ally and she loves him in turn. He's also capable of being nice to his mother, wanting her to quit smoking.
- Troubled Sympathetic Bigot: Some of his beliefs are certainly vile, and he's done some awful things due to those beliefs, but it's clear he's a product of his environment and showcases some redeeming qualities even before his departure from his ideology. His devotion to his beliefs even seems weak at times, as he mentions that he thinks that some non-whites are alright, although people like Seth are working to radicalize him further.
- What the Hell, Hero?: He is at first violently upset when Derek breaks with Cameron's gang. Thankfully, Derek is able to calm him down enough to explain himself.
Doris Vinyard
Doris Vinyard
Played By: Beverly D'Angelo
- Broken Bird: The loss of her husband and oldest son have really done a number on her. The smoking-related illness doesn't help.
- Incurable Cough of Death: Doris has an undisclosed illness, possibly lung cancer or COPD, that manifests as a persistent hacking cough. Derek not-so-subtly implies that her chain smoking is the cause.
- Useless Bystander Parent: She doesn't do much about Dennis' racist rants except chide him lightly, and the first time she makes overtures against Derek's racism, it's to throw him out over it. She's trying her very best to do better with Danny, but her failing health, Derek's absence, and Seth's corrupting influence are making it difficult.
Davina Vinyard
Davina Vinyard
Played By: Jennifer Lien
- Flat Character: She mainly exists as motivation for Derek to get his act together, and as a demonstration for how far he's fallen when his hatred boils over and he starts bullying her.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In the flashback scenes, Davina is horrified about the path Derek is taking, but her relationship with him gets much better after he returns from prison, and she's one of the few who are genuinely happy about his change...
- Happy Ending Override:...until, of course, Danny dies. He was HER little brother, too.
- Only Sane Man: The only member of her family to simultaneously not be a racist and to express open disgust at the racism of the rest of her family. Unfortunately, it doesn't end up counting for much.
- Out of Focus: The centerpiece of the story is Derek and to a lesser extent Danny, so Davina is largely a background character who emerges once or twice.
Dennis Vinyard
Dennis Vinyard
Played By: William Russ
- Asshole Victim: Subverted. We're shown his death in the line of duty and Derek's reaction to it before it's revealed that he was the initial cause of Derek's racism. Dennis is far from sympathetic, but the film never suggests that he had it coming.
- Death by Racism: He is racist and was killed by a black drug dealer, although him being racist had nothing to do with him getting killed, and he was actually trying to put out a fire at the black drug dealer's den.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: Played with. He was a racist and unintentionally fed into Derek's racism. However, his family loved him deeply and remember him only as a hero after his death. Danny is the first one to critically examine his and Derek's relationship with their dad, and it takes him a long time to get there.
- Foil: To Cameron Alexander. Dennis is just an ignorant blowhard whose racism stems from a ton of unexamined prejudices. Contrast Alexander, who is (ostensibly) an ideologically committed Neo-Nazi whose hatred of minorities is intellectual and calculated. Their similar influence on Derek shows that, in the final analysis, the difference didn't really amount to much.
- Greater-Scope Villain: Him being a racist in the first place and his death motivating his sons to turn to racism as well would qualify him as this.
- Hypocrite: His rant about race over talent is framed by him dismissing Native Son — widely regarded as a classic of contemporary American literature — out of hand simply because it was written by an African American. Made even worse by the fact that Doris points out that Dennis himself barely reads at all, so he's really in no position to critique a literature assignment. Then, of course, is his contempt for Dr. Sweeney, holder of two doctorate degrees despite a troubled background, simply because he's black. A savvy viewer is meant to catch this, and the fact that it renders the whole conversation suspect,
but not all of them did. - Jerkass Has a Point: While some of his points at the dinner table are flawed, it's reasonable for him to be unhappy and concerned that some of his co-workers got hired due to affirmative action policies despite being less qualified than others, particularly in that his job is extremely dangerous.
- Noble Bigot: Deconstructed. Dennis was a courageous firefighter and considered a hero by both the local community and his two sons. Doris is shown to absolutely adore him, flaws and all. However, all of this only serves to make his racism even more destructive by making both Derek and Danny far more accepting of it, and Doris' affection for him prevents her from speaking up against him as strongly as she should have, despite disagreeing with his views. His rant about affirmative action sounds superficially reasonable to Derek (and the viewer), but in the context of his complaints about Derek's reading assignment, it's clear that he's just looking for excuses. This comes out in full in Derek's Start of Darkness, where he delivers a racist rant which is just a recitation of things Dennis said to him at the dinner table.
- Posthumous Character: His death triggers Danny and Derek's descent into madness.
- Small Role, Big Impact: He only appeared in a flashback yet is the source of Derek's descent into white supremacy. He believed the new firemen were only chosen for tokenism and his death at the hands of African-American gangbangers is what inspired Derek's hatred towards all non-whites.
- Unreliable Expositor: We only have his word to go on that the two black firefighters that were hired by his department were only hired because of their race, and given what follows, his word is at least a little suspect.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Dennis' own racism was the catalyst for Derek's decent into Neo-Nazism after his death. It's not clear if Dennis would approve of how far Derek went, though it's heavily implied that even he would be disgusted with the wanton acts of violence that Derek and his gang get up to.
Seth Ryan
Seth Ryan
Played By: Ethan Suplee
- Big Eater: Several of the scenes involve Seth either eating (jellybeans, burgers) or whining about being hungry.
- The Brute: He's not very smart, and mostly acts as muscle to Derek, and later, Cameron.
- Butt-Monkey: He ends up on the receiving end of a lot of abuse, both physical and verbal. Mocked for, among other things, his weight both by his Neo-Nazi comrades and by Davina, is beaten up by Derek and later a gang of African-Americans. It really couldn't have happened to a nicer person.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Nowhere near as brutal as the scene that gives the trope its name, but it really says something that Seth can face down an unarmed Derek while holding a gun and still lose the fight.
- Fat Bastard: Chauvinistic, petty, racist, loud-mouthed, perverted and fat.
- Fat Idiot: He is frequently shown to be dull-witted.
- The Friend No One Likes: Everyone in the Neo-Nazi movement finds him irritating. Even Cameron Alexander, who at least tries to put up a veneer of being A Father to His Men, shows open contempt for him. The only reason they keep him around is because he's so dedicated.
- Hate Sink: Seth has no redeeming qualities as a friend, a basketball player, or a human being, to the point where even his neo-Nazi comrades find him tiresome.
- Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: Seth is the main source of comic relief in the film, which primarily comes from how comically over-the-top his racism is. He's one of the more despicably racist members of the cast, but the way he goes about it is so transparently silly that it's impossible to take him seriously.
- Miles Gloriosus: Is rather boisterous in spite of his extreme ineptitude. For all his bluster, he's not even a threat with a gun in his hand.
- Pet the Dog: In a deleted scene, he gives some change to a veteran outside a burger joint. Though he did do it because Cameron told him to.
- Plucky Comic Relief: His idiocy and the sheer extent of his racism is the main source of the film's humor.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He’s so racist that he throws away a black jellybean instead of eating it.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Pretty much every sentence.
- Stout Strength: Seth is morbidly obese, but at the end of the basketball game he easily lifts Derek up over his shoulders.
- Sub-Par Supremacist: He’s fat, stupid, and can’t even kill someone with a gun when they’re unarmed and at point-blank range, all of which runs counter to his white supremacist beliefs. He even provides the page image.
- Toxic Friend Influence: To Danny, encouraging his more racist tendencies and leading him to become a Neo-Nazi. Derek shows up before anything comes of it.
Stacey
Stacey
Played By: Fairuza Balk
- Ax-Crazy: She is aroused by violence, to the point that she screams for Seth to shoot Derek after the former pulls a gun.
- Character Development: There's a very subtle implication that she's undergone character development while Derek was in prison... but unfortunately it's development towards becoming a worse person/more radicalized to the Neo-Nazi cause. While other flashbacks show that she was not a nice person and agreed with Derek's Neo-Nazi beliefs before he went to prison, her initial reaction to Derek confronting the black gang with a gun in the opening sequence is to be freaked out by his intention and protest Derek's decision to go outside. By contrast, when Seth confronts Derek at the Nazi party, she's cheering for Seth to shoot Derek.
- Fair-Weather Friend: She turns on Derek when he breaks with Cameron's gang. But even when he was a committed Neo-Nazi (and she was his lover), and despite her opinion that the black gang members he killed deserved exactly what they got, there's no indication that she ever made an effort to visit him in prison.
- Immodest Orgasm: Right at the beginning of the film, too.
- Lady Macbeth: She is fully supportive of Derek's ideology and does all she can to make him stay the course after they're reunited.
- Redemption Rejection: Derek encourages her to drop the Neo Nazism and leave the town with him... which she takes as a betrayal.
- Slasher Smile: Look at her whenever a violent act is about to happen.
- Yes-Man: To Derek, although it's eventually revealed that her loyalty to the cause runs deeper than her love for him.
Dr. Robert Sweeney
Dr. Robert Sweeney
Played By: Avery Brooks
- The Atoner: Sweeney makes up for his violent past by mentoring kids who are likely to go in the same direction, like Derek.
- Badass Bookworm: Sweeney grew up in "the hood" but has two PhDs.
- Bald of Authority: During the "present" he's the principal at Danny's high school. He's also a consultant of sorts for the local police department, advising them on the rise of local neo-Nazi groups and helping them reach out to reformed neo-Nazis like Derek.
- Big Good: His decision to reach out to Danny and "not give up" on him spurs the plot.
- More than Just a Teacher: In a flashback, Derek points out that he's vastly overqualified for a job as a high school teacher. It's all but stated that Sweeney aware of this, but thinks that the best use of his advanced education is helping kids from his old neighborhood. He's also a police liaison and helps to rehabilitate prisoners.
- Cool Teacher: It really says something when Derek talks about him with great respect even when Derek was a Neo-Nazi.
- Non-Giving-Up School Guy: In contrast to Murray, Sweeney is willing to follow Derek even to jail to give him a shot at redemption, and earlier acknowledged Derek's intellect even after Derek became a committed neo-Nazi. Also, while Murray was willing to kick Danny out of school over his Hitler paper, Sweeney decides to give him an alternative assignment to help him explore the roots of his own racism.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: With both Danny and Derek. He is committed to reaching both of them and pulling them off their current paths but he isn't a pushover. He makes clear to Danny that if he doesn't write the essay he assigns him at the start, he will expel him.
- Title Drop: "We will call this class... American History... X."
- Worthy Opponent: Cameron Alexander expresses some level of respect for his persistence, though it's hard to know f it's sincere or not.
Murray
Murray
Played By: Elliott Gould
- Adults Are Useless: His response to both Derek and Danny's racism is to pretty much throw up his hands and walk away. Granted, this is after Derek scared the hell out of him by physically intimidating him and subjecting him to a virulently racist rant, so it's not completely inexcusable.
- Informed Judaism: Gould (the actor) is Jewish, and the character is stated to be Jewish, but there's no real indication that he practices Judaism.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Sees Derek's violence toward his family and tries to call him on it, and rather than suspend or fail Danny over the Hitler paper, sends him to talk to Sweeney.
- Took a Level in Cynic: His break-up with Doris and years of dealing with racist abuse from Danny and Derek have clearly exhausted him. In a flashback he's at least willing to attempt to stand up to Derek, but by the time the movie starts, he's completely fed up with Danny.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: Although genuinely concerned about Danny, he's one of the few good guys that refuses to believe Derek has changed. When he laments to Sweeney that Danny is becoming like his brother, Sweeney calls him out on it since he witnessed the change firsthand.
Cameron Alexander
Cameron Alexander
Played By: Stacy Keach
- Asshole Victim: Being a racist who encourages violence against innocent bystander and brainwashing troubled youths into joining his gangs and being a committed white supremacist is already enough reason for what later happens to him in the movie, but bonus points when Derek meets him after his prison release where he chews Cameron out for betraying skinhead members for reduced prison sentence. When Cameron threatens to turn Danny into a member of the skinheads, Derek responds with a well-deserved beatdown. Later in the movie, Cameron and some of his gang get jumped by black gangbangers and is implied to have been beaten hard. Deleted footage shows they received a brutal jumping and just before the assault, they were harassing an interracial couple just minding their business.
- Berserk Button: Gets furious when Derek calls him a chickenhawknote and points out that he's a massive hypocrite, because nothing hurts more than the truth.
- Big Bad: The closest one the film has. By the time Derek is out of prison he's organizing several white supremacist gangs throughout the west coast.
- Butt-Monkey: Not quite as much as Seth, but he gets beaten up by Derek and, in a deleted scene, is heavily implied to be jumped by a gang of African-Americans.
- Dirty Coward: Threw two of his men under the bus to save himself from having more than two months of prison time, since he presumably couldn't stand watching out for his back any longer. He also declines to accompany Derek and the gang on the raid on the grocery store that was his idea to begin with, offering a half-assed appeal to age and legal woes as his reason for not getting his own hands dirty.
- Evil Old Folks: Neo-Nazi old guy who doesn't seem to have been worn down by age.
- Evil Mentor: To the D.O.C. in general, to Derek in particular. Took up Danny under his wing as well.
- Evil Scars: Cameron's scars are a sign of his evil. Stacy Keach shaved his mustache so his actual facial scars would be visible.
- Faux Affably Evil: Even when threatening Derek he keeps the polite façade.
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul: Stacy Keach wears some pretty bad tinted old-man glasses.
- Hate Sink: Despite the movie's message that hate is baggage, Cameron comes across as a completely despicable individual without a single redeeming quality who embodies the worst racism has to offer and you don't want to see anything but the absolute worst happen to him.
- Hypocrite: For all his boasts of doing prison time and racial unity, he sold out two teenaged members of his own gang to have reduced jail time.
- Pet the Dog: Has a moment like this in a deleted scene where he tells a homeless veteran that it's not his fault that he's homeless, and then requests Seth to give him some money. It's ruined when he makes a racist comment to the veteran, though, which implies that he did less out of compassion and more in order to promote his political agenda.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: He's not just a racist. He is the leader of all racists this side of Los Angeles and specializes in grooming Politically Incorrect Villains by preying on their insecurities, their hatred and biterness, the crime rates and the unemployment to point the blame for everything towards every single immigrant individually.
- Straw Hypocrite: Derek, none too happy about learning the truth about Cameron's hard time, accuses him of this:Derek: But it doesn't matter if I don't, does it? 'Cause you got the next crop lined up and ready to go, you fucking chicken hawk! You prey on people, Cam! You use them! I lost three years of my life for your fucking phoney cause but I am on to you now, you fucking snake.
- Surrounded by Idiots: He enforces this on himself to an extent, since he chooses to be surrounded with people who follow him blindly and don't think for themselves. Not all of them have Derek's wits, however, and a deleted scene where he is talking to Seth takes it to the extreme, despite being only one idiot.
Lamont
Lamont
Played By: Guy Torry
- Actually Pretty Funny: At first, Derek tries to stay cold to Lamont, but Lamont's antics — mimicking the KKK with a bedsheet and his "angry sex" monologue — get through Derek's armor, which helps the latter recognize the humanity of black people.
- All There in the Manual: His name is never mentioned in the film.
- Almighty Janitor: He controls the underwear. Do NOT fuck with him.
- Deadpan Snarker: Pretty much every line he has is a snarky comment.
- Disproportionate Retribution: He's doing even more time than Derek for the heinous crime of stealing a TV and then accidentally dropping it on the arresting officer's foot.
- Magical Negro: Unlike Sweeney, Lamont is more of a plot point to make Derek question his own racist views. He does, however, have some unstated hold over the other inmates, and is implied to be the reason why the black gang members did not kill Derek after the neo-Nazi gang stopped protecting him.
- Think Nothing of It: He insist that Derek doesn't owe him anything for protecting him. Derek disagrees.
- What the Hell, Hero?: He freaks out when Derek starts dissing the neo-Nazi prison gang. Not that Lamont would be inclined to stick up for the Aryan Brotherhood, but he's deeply concerned that Derek's going to get himself killed without anyone left to protect him.
