The story begins with two black men arriving at the house of a neo-nazi name Derek Vinyard intending to break into his car and steal it. The man discovers this and kills both of the men as they try to escape. He is then arrested and jailed, then the story moves ahead in time to the day that he is released from jail. The story, though, focuses on his younger brother Danny who begins to follow his brother’s neo-nazi group even though Derek is reformed as he leaves the prison. Danny’s principal, a black man, sees Danny following in Derek’s ways. He takes on Danny as a personal student to make him write a paper analyzing the events concerning his brother’s incarceration and the impact of the society that he lives in on his present view and situation in life.

The older brother Derek had become the younger leader of the neo-nazi leader after his father was shot and killed while fighting a fire in

Another important concept is Cooley’s definition of the “Looking-Glass Self”, in which people use others as mirrors of themselves in social situations to better understand conceptions of who they appear to be in society. This is symbolically shown in the movie as Derek steps out of the shower and sees himself in the mirror. He takes a closer look and covers the tattoo of a swastika that he has on his chest and realizes that others who see this respond in negative ways because they are very offended at his open racism. Also, this is shown, as the African-Americans appear disturbed when he takes his shirt off to play basketball against them. He notices this and realizes that they form judgments and conceptions of him by how he acts in society. He then begins to see himself through their eyes and that is what eventually makes him change himself.

Next to be explained is the concept of “Nature vs. Nurture”, or Heredity versus Environment. This concept is shown in a particular scene where Derek is at dinner with his family and his father begins influencing him towards negative feelings about African-Americans although the society he presently lives in does not influence him until his father is killed by a black man. Both Heredity and Environment now play an important role in his decision to join a racist group both because of his father’s raising of him and by what the environment has done to him. Eventually it is Nurture that plays the bigger role in influencing those in the racist group as defined in the movie plot.

The conflict between these cultures leads to the next sociological term “Ethnocentrism”, or the tendency to judge other customs and cultures according to one’s own, mostly in a negative sense. The Neo-nazi group i

Some topics in this essay:
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