Being such a proud white man he should have gotten himself a good job and moved his mother and siblings out of that bum beach town and into a gated community, far, far away from there. Problems solved and the younger brother would have never been killed.
The Neo Nazi stuff is rather pointless. Picking fights with black people at the beach and picking on undocumented workers does not pay the bills.
Agree with the first part but he didn't pick a fight at the beach, he challenged them to a game with the loser never coming back to the courts. Derek and friends won fair and square and the opponents couldn't handle it and just had to go to his house and vandalize his property. As he told one of them, they messed with the wrong bull.
shareactually that was one of the more tragic things about this story - that Derek's got all these qualities - academically good, great at basketball, streetwise, leadership skills, public speaking/oratory - Ed Norton himself when discussing this movie says that Derek could be an army general or something with all the gifts he has - and yet he's so consumed by anger that he throws it all away, or worse still, uses these talents for something negative and to seek what he sees as revenge on those who killed his father.
Without all that hate and rage, he probably would have gotten himself and his family out of that area. Even with his skinhead ways, according to Danny he had a good job (although we're never told what that is)