The Racial Community For The African Americans In The Film "13th"

To illustrate what life was back in the day in the racial community was harsh for the African Americans. There were times that people were wrongly accused of things just because of their race. The documentary “13TH” (2016), directed by Ava DuVernay, went in depth about slavery and the prison system in the United States, and how it played a big role in the racial community.

To begin with, the documentary starts off talking about the African American population being enslaved and treated poorly throughout their lives. After the civil war, the 13th amendment was passed to abolished slavery and making all the African American free of enslavement. Therefore, the whites ended up finding a loophole in the amendment that is “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime”. This gave the white people an opportunity to ‘legally enslave’ African Americans.

The African Americans had to rebuild the southern economy after the war. When the civil war ended African Americans were arrested for their minor crimes such as loitering. With this loophole in place this is what caused the first prison bloom. In addition, Ronald Reagan was elected in 1982, he put into America’s ear that drugs were killing the economy and the blacks were the fugitives. The “War of Drugs” had become intense that African Americans were arrested for the smallest possessions of marijuana and/or other drugs. Many of African Americans were already incarcerated.

Meanwhile; as years went by the “California” “Three Strikes Out” law was passed. This law indicates that when a person commits their third violent crime, they will be incarcerated forever. The prisons were forced to release 4,200 misdemeanors. (13th). In addition, my thoughts on this film is that people were wrongly treated on somethings, but at the same time they brought this on themselves by wanting the social light, but they didn’t want the punishment. In 1970 the U.S prison population was 357,292 and then just in ten years it was 513,900, in 1985 it was 759,100 and in continuing to grow in year 2000 the U.S prison population was 2,015,300.

The sentencing was different for white people than African Americans. If you’re white and committed a crime you would just get a slap on the wrist, most African Americans that committed crimes were sentenced to prison. Many white people back in the day and even to this day think that African Americans are the public enemy, when crimes are committed. In the world today, many will say that there are two types of people in their race.

To explain; in the white community, you have your “white trash” and you typical whites and in the black community you have your “negros” and your African Americans. I believe that is true and you can see it when it comes to a thing like the crimes that are being committed and how the way people act. You have your classy and respectful ones and then you have the ones that just don’t care what they say and they are the “untouchable ones”; they are the one that commit the crimes and they think they can get away with things but when are caught they cry wolf and say they never did that knowing that they did.

My opinion on this film is that yes there were something that did not need to go that far and the way the African Americans were treated was wrong and that was not the right thing to do just because they are different on the outside. At the end of the day we are people and we were brought into this world for a reason. Just because we don’t look the same and are not the same race doesn’t make a difference on who we are, “never judge someone without knowing the whole story, you many think you understand but you don’t”.

In other words, I get that in the world there are some people that are their true races and there are some that aren’t. This is just not in the African American community but for all races. I strongly understand what the African Americans had to go through by being wrongly accused for something. While watching this documentary it should be that we sometimes are alone in this world and many people will turn a blind eye to us if we are in trouble. Everyone has struggles and sometimes we need help getting through them and just because we are not the same race we should still help each other no matter what. In this documentary there are something that I agree and disagree on, for example, the “Three Strikes Out” law.

I think if you are found guilty of your crime, then you should serve your sentence. This goes for all races not just African Americans. When you look at the crimes that are be committed most of them are done by African Americans. When the prisoner is being found guilty their family nine chances out of ten thinks that they are innocent, but if you look at their record they will have many minor crimes like petty theft. Back in the day it was different from today the presidency is way different and when President Nixon was in office his advisor had said something that were facts on what they were doing to get rid of the African Americans.

For example: “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and the black people. You understand what I’m saying? We couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities we could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs?

Of course, we did” I can somewhat relate to that but not fully. In my opinion if you are struggling with something there are people out there that will help you can, yes some people will only help if you are the same race but you just can’t say that the world is against you, because you are not the race someone is and in something everyone is treated different because of the circumstances.