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13th, By Ava Duvernay And Spencer Averick

896 Words4 Pages

13th is a documentary by Ava DuVernay and Spencer Averick on the intersection of race, the American justice system, and the incarceration rate in the United States. It was officially released in 2016, and is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment in the U.S., which led to the freedom of slaves and prohibited slavery. 13th touched on many aspects of the suppression of African Americans, the war on drugs, Jim Crow laws, and the race inequality in the American prison system.
The documentary started off by stating that the United States has 5% of the world's population but 25% of the people in the world who are currently incarcerated. To many people today, the 13th amendment was a great deal because it freed slaves but what we fail to realize …show more content…

After the 13th amendment passed and slaves were freed, black people were suddenly being accused for trivial crimes and were thrown into jail, only to become slaves again but this time not in the fields, but rather in prisons. Think of it, black people never truly knew what liberation was or is because up to this very day, we are still being reviled, we are looked down upon, we face discrimination every day, and we will never be considered equal by everyone. When the 13th amendment passed, we were slapped in the face with the Jim Crow and for what? Because others could not accept slave liberty and that is deeply …show more content…

One in every seventeen white males will do prison time of some sort, compared with one in every three male African-Americans; once put in jail, prisoners automatically lose their rights, just as slaves would. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nonprofit organization was behind the Florida “stand your ground” law that helped freed George Zimmerman after the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Now Zimmerman is considered as a White Hispanic and Trayvon was of course, black; a child was shot and killed by a grown up because he felt threatened by a black kid and an organization helps justify the murder of this child. This is by all means unfair because if this crime went the other way around, one can bet that the black kid would be severely punished.
The 13th amendment freed at least four million slaves but as soon as they break a law, they are immediately reminded of those ruthless moments, they are branded as criminals. The documentary mentioned the civil rights era which came after the Jim Crow, and as if that was not enough, they began lynching African Americans, this was at the height of the rise of the Klu Klux

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