Movie producer Ava DuVernay investigates the historical backdrop of racial imbalance in the United States, concentrating on the way that the country’s detainment facilities are excessively loaded up with African-Americans. The film starts off by explaining that the U.S. is 5% of the world’s population, yet has 25% of the world prisons populations. The film than explores the conditions of the 13th amendment, which states that it is unconstitutional for someone to be held as a slave. Today, mass incarceration is the new slavery. After the war, African Americans were imprisoned in high rates for anything they could get arrested for. African Americans were portrayed as animalistic and monstrous, in films like Birth of a Nation by D.W. Griffith. Even though slavery was abolished, people found other ways to legally to keep African Americans subjugated, through segregation, Jim crow laws, and incarceration for low-level offenses. A perfect example was the War on Drugs introduced by Richard Nixon and distorted into a true war by Ronald Reagan. This war on drugs was a war on communities of color and threw an insane number of African Americans behind bars.
While this is going on African Americans became over-represented in the criminal justice system, especially in the news, which portrayed African Americans as an “issue” that needed to be controlled and became essential to white people’s views on African Americans. African American youth were being called superpredators, an example of this was the Central Park 5. Powerful African Americans became targets of the government, such as Angela Davis. Laws were being created with intention of locking up “dangerous people,” crime laws, mandatory minimum, 3 strike laws were created and is responsible for the massive expansion of the prison system with this, African Americans and the poor filled the jails and prisons. People are sitting in prisons and jails because they were too poor to get out, they wouldn’t afford a trial, however, if everyone insisted on a trial the whole system would be shut down. As a result of mass incarceration more African American men are in prisons today than were enslaved.
With the help of social media, more people are becoming away of the issues and are being forced to watch and understand what is happening to the people in this world I believe the take home message of this film was that mass incarceration is the new slavery. Mass incarceration is the reason there is so much police violence, broken homes and separation in this world. I think the producer Ava DuVernay wanted to make people aware of the racial issues that this world still faces today. Critical criminology examines the motives behind the actions of agencies that deal with crime, and tests traditional thoughts about crime and the criminal justice system. Critical criminology presents the role of power, privilege, and categories of stratification into how we think about crime and justice in our society. Society is loaded with tension, conflict and inequalities, which results in crime.
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Laws are set in place to preserve power and oppress those who are a threat to that power. Those assumptions made directly relate to what was discussed in the film, the idea that laws are set in place to control minorities and the poor, for example the war on drugs. The film spoke heavily on the criminal laws that trap minorities and poor people, and the critical race theory is the perfect example. The theory examines the role of race in how crime is defined, enforced, and punished. In our society, it’s clear that people are treated differently when it comes to the law, in the New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander states, “Race has always influence the administration of justice in the United States. Since the day the first prison opened, people of color have been disproportionately represented behind bars.” African Americans are being put in jail way more than any other race, you constantly see African Americans being pr
As DuVernay goes over the agonizing course of African American history from slavery to segregation, from integration to pride, and inescapable oppression, I was very overwhelmed and my emotions were all over the place. It was a very powerful film that touched on very important information, however it got my blood boiling. The facts were shocking and aggravating. A lot of the images they were showed were pictures and videos I’ve seen in other documentaries, classes, textbooks, or on social media, but every time I’ve seen them, no matter how many times, the pain and torture that African Americans faced and still do face is heartbreaking. Even though the facts and imagery were shocking and aggravating, it was true facts, that needs to be known and understood. True facts about racial inequalities and setbacks that this world needs to be aware, that expose the truth, in the hope for a real change. Sometimes I try to put aside the oppression that I know African Americans face, yet films like this snap me back into reality and helps me see the changes that need to be made and motivate me to be a part of the change.
