I can’t believe I avoided a re-watching of American History X because you were so against the ending. I watched it tonight, and I think you really missed the ball on this one. You assumed facts not in evidence. There are only two major actions that Danny does. The first is to take down the flags in his room. I don’t think this is an unreasonable action at all. First, I think you don’t fully appreciate the impact of the scene at the party. That entire group turned on Danny’s role model / brother. His “friend” Seth pulled a trigger on him, while his brother’s girlfriend was screaming for him to pull the trigger. If I was Danny, I would immediately be against that group. There’s a hiarchy in terms of what people will blindly follow (some freaks call it a council of gods). Danny blindly followed both the DOC and his brother, but his brother would always trump.

Regardless, taking down the posters isn’t completely rejecting the beliefs. First, he could at the very least be respecting his brother’s beliefs. They are sharing a room, and maybe Danny is considerate enough to not want that stuff up there if it’s going to make his brother uncomfortable. Remember, the guy did get raped by a bunch of Nazis. Second, rejecting the DOC is separate from rejecting the racist beliefs. It’s very possible that Danny understood the dangers of being in that group and was deciding to leave it.

The fact that Danny isn’t completely turned is pretty apparent when he learns about Seth being attacked by the black guys. He asks his brother if they should go visit him in the hospital. This is a guy who pulled a trigger on his brother the night before! Furthermore, Danny didn’t change his look at all the next morning for school. He still had the chain on his wallet, which I believe is a trademark of skinheads.

The paper is probably the reason you most thought Danny had changed. But, I don’t think you really listened to the words. He didn’t say that everything he believed in was wrong. He said that carrying around hate is baggage. This was an essay on his brother’s experiences. Is there any question that his brother let his hate be baggage? He spent three years in prison because of his hate. The moral of the story he told Danny was that his hate was baggage. I think it’s very plausible to believe a racist person could, in the course of 24 hours, realize that it’s wrong to focus on your hate all the time. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve resolved to just be RVD (wow, I originally typed that as RBV and had to think about his name) at the spur of the moment. “Ok, I’m not going to let this stuff consume me anymore.”. I probably say that once every six months.

I always assumed the last quote in the paper was MLK because Danny says “I picked a guy that you would like.” Well, I had to look it up online, and it’s actually Abraham Lincoln. To be honest, it’s slightly racist to say that the teacher would like Lincoln. He might as well have thrown in a “you know, because he freed you people.” As a side note, I’ve read some very racist comments by Lincoln.

Anyway, if you reexamine the paper, it’s message isn’t “I’ve been wrong about everything”, but rather “allowing the hatred to consume my brother has really screwed up our lives.” A racist could have such thoughts without completely abandoning his belief system.

I will grant you that tearing down the posters is a bit overdramatic, and the tone in which Danny narrates his paper is a little too cute for my taste. Clearly, the implication was there that he was “changing”. Leaving you to assume that makes the ending that much more tragic. However, I think that it’s a lot more open ended and vague than you originally thought. This wasn’t the feel good story of the year, where Danny is saved in the course of two hours. There were three life altering events (brother gets out of prison, brother is turned on at party, and brother discusses the past three years) in the course of one night. It gave the tone of a paper (on that very subject!) a distinct edge to it. Who’s to say that Danny wouldn’t continue to believe in his racist beliefs for an extended period had he not been murdered? You were expecting the happy ending, and then allowed the open ended questions to reaffirm that.

I know you don’t watch movies a second time unless they are terrible, but you should give this another try.