Introduction: After ten years, when I think about the issue of faith, I suddenly found that any kind of faith, including my faith, if abused, can become a stick to beat people and persecute others. Blasphemy is a crime, anti-nationality, anti-tradition, and no ancestors are crimes. As soon as you can cite a belief that can be believed without the danger of losing your mind, without saying anything more about its benefits, I will immediately convert to it--- which is much greater than all the other benefits combined. --- Wang Xiaobo
"All men are created equal" is the founding foundation of the United States, and everyone has the right to life, freedom and the right to pursue happiness. This beautiful picture of human rights is not presented in "American X-Files", and cultural differences, identity differences, and skin color differences become the construction points of racial contradictions in the film. "American X-Files" is a history assignment given to Daniel by teacher Sweeney, which is not only about the personal record of neo-Nazi Reddeck, but also part of the history of Racial Discrimination in the United States through the epitome of the individual. It mainly tells the story of Redek from the youth interested in racial issues to the father was killed by blacks and hated blacks, to the prison to re-acquaint himself with black people, and finally decided to reconcile with black people and his own prejudices. Daniel was twice influenced by his brother to put aside racial prejudice, but was eventually killed by the Black Man. As Derek grew up, the racial problem has been twisting and turning or the outcome of reincarnation is unknown, but part of the reason for Drake's racial hatred is a bias in the multiple identity mechanism.
1. Cultural identity
Identity is a perception and description of the subject himself. Due to the differences between cultural subjects, the identity of the subject is required, and the interaction between cultural subjects leads to the transmutation of identity. From a cultural point of view, in the process of individual identity, the power operation of cultural institutions promotes individuals to actively or passively participate in practical activities and achieve identity. Drey admired black teachers when he was a student, and was interested in the black ethnographic book "Indigenous", his father knew about it for the first time to instill the idea of racial discrimination in Derry, and his father's "educational" role in Derry led to a change in Derry's identity when values were formed, he was white, different from blacks and immigrants. His father was shot and killed by a black drug dealer at work, and the role of black drug dealers on Drey once again changed Drey's identity, and Drey's picture in the interview also showed that Derry had changed from racial prejudice to racial hatred. Drey listens to Cameron's arrangement, Cameron is the power operator, Cameron deceives Drake and other neo-Nazi groups by consuming the racial prejudices of Drey and others, Cameron trades with non-whites while encouraging neo-Nazis to persecute blacks and immigrants, and young people who think about racial ills in one direction think that they are defending the rights and interests of whites and are righteous acts.
2. Collective identity
Collective identity refers to the choice of cultural subjects between two different cultural groups or subcultural groups. Because of the influence of different cultures, this cultural subject must regard one collective cultural self and another as the other. As a nation of immigrants, the biggest obstacle on America's path to nationhood is the intricate national problem. There are Indians who were slaughtered and killed by Europeans, black people who were sold from Africa as slaves, and minorities in Asia and Latin America, who were inferior in real life, but in the American War of Independence, they paid the same and even high price for the efforts and lives of Caucasians as an individual. But after the war, their rights were still ignored by interest groups that held real power.
In the more than two hundred years since the founding of the United States, it has experienced countless bloody conflicts and paid a huge price because of the national issue after experiencing the Civil War. Differences in skin color automatically divide the people living in the United States into different groups, and in the eyes of the neo-Nazis such as Derry in the film, black people represent plundering, robbing white people of their resources, treating white people savagely and rudely, and white people are losing their power. In every neo-Nazi speech, black people are moths, but racism is not innate, and for teenagers who do not have the ability to think independently, the words and deeds of authoritative figures are their bibles, classifying skin color, and persecuting non-white people without deep contact with people of other colors. The colored people who are toxic to society represent the collection of colored people, in fact, the teacher Sweeney is kind, the prison inmates are kind, and the neo-Nazis in the prison are in line with the values that Reddeck recognizes, and even hurt him.
Prisons are political superstructures, and in prisons, Derek lives through different collectives in the prison—blacks and whites. Subverting his perception of these two collectives, which also satirizes these extremist beliefs, Derry begins to think about the question of the teacher Sweeney, have you ever thought about living a better life by yourself? In fact, this is the root of racial contradictions, with the opposition between the two major groups of black and white people fundamentally, not because of skin color, but the focus of each person's life is no longer to live a better life through their own efforts, but to find external objective non-essential reasons, for their own collective struggle for more additional rights and interests will be the other side's rights and interests reduction, struggle brings turmoil, turmoil brings hatred, hatred brings killing. His brother Daniel was eventually shot dead by a black man who had a verbal altercation, because the collective was different, the race was different, and a small thing would rise to a big thing about the sense of honor of the group to which he belonged.
3. Self-identity
Self-identity, which emphasizes the psychological and physical experiences of the self, is centered on the self. In Lacan's mirror phase theory, children visualize their appearance from the mirror and consciously become a self-aware subject of thought. The death of the father, the death of the mother with the love object to eat with the family, the defense of Drake's girlfriend, the fight with the mother, sister and the mother's boyfriend, here is not only as a boyfriend and neo-Nazi behavior, but also in the maintenance of patriarchy, the father's death Derek assimilated his identity into the patriarchal irreversible.
Second, Redek's strong response to the persecution of non-white races as a leading figure in the Skinheads was the first recognition of Derek's neo-Nazi identity. Tattooed with white power, Nazi motifs. After entering the prison, Riddeck used tattoos to find companions of the same faith, and initially successfully evaded the collective hatred of blacks and completed the second identity of the "neo-Nazi" and "skinheads". In addition, after Derek decides to quit the neo-Nazi after his release from prison, he sees his tattooed body in the mirror, and the traces of the neo-Nazi contrast with the belief in starting a new life, and the mirror of Redek completes the self-identity of the new life and new image.
All radical paranoia always brings harm, each of us has multiple identities, will get multiple identities, but we must first identify with ourselves, we have to have our own values, every choice we make, is to make our own life better.