Derek Vinyard

Derek Vinyard is a fictional character in Tony Kaye's 1998 film "American History X", portrayed by Edward Norton in an Academy Award-nominated performance.

In the film

Derek is an important figure in the neo-Nazi gang Disciples of Christ (D.O.C.), a major gang presence in Venice Beach, California.

The film reveals that Derek's learned his racist beliefs from his father, a firefighter; Derek's hatred of minorites is entrenched when his father is killed on the job by a gang of black men.

Years later, Derek is charged with killing two young black men who tried to steal his truck, after an encounter on the basketball court, and sentenced to three years in prison. He goes to prison proudly displaying neo-Nazi tattoos, and initially aligns himself with his cell block's white supremacist gang. However, when Derek sees members of the Aryan gang performing drug deals with mestizos and black men, he leaves the gang and becomes a loner inside the walls of the prison. Soon after, Derek makes the acquaintance of a black inmate named Lamont, with whom he works in the prison laundry room.

Soon afterward, he is brutally beaten and raped by his former allies inside the prison bathroom. He then sees that Lamont is his only real friend, and realizes once he is released on parole that only through Lamont's intervention did the black prison gangs leave him unharmed.

He returns home to find that his little brother, Danny, has followed in his neo-Nazi footsteps. Derek tries to persuade his brother to break from the D.O.C. and even confronts his former friends in the gang to leave Danny alone. This does not go as planned and soon Derek is labeled as a "nigger-lover". Derek eventually tells his brother (Danny) to rid himself of his racist views.

In the film's climax, Danny is killed by a black kid with whom he had an earlier confrontation, and Derek is left with his worst fear realized.