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Incarceration In The Film 13th, By Ava Duvernay

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13th, directed by Ava DuVernay, is a documentary that touches base with race, justice and mass incarceration in the United States. Getting its title from the Thirteenth Amendment, which freed slaves and prohibited slavery, however UNLESS as for punishment for a crime. Which has allowed incarceration to simply re-enslave African-Americans but just under another name. African Americans are still slaves through the “justice” system”; they’ve just taken the chains away, to replace them with bars. Thus, leading into a fact within just the first couple of minutes into the documentary, we learn that “The United States is home to 5% of the world’s population, but 25% of the world’s prisoners. Think about that”. Immediately after, one’s attention …show more content…

As an example, as the story is being told, you can see the growth in the number of incarcerated Americans over the years. Leading into another quote/fact from the documentary, “Right now, we now have more African-Americans under criminal supervision than all the slaves back in 1850’s”. So, the documentary unfolds from way back in time, during slavery, to times today, which are still so very relevant. It was sure to be known that the problem isn’t with whites and blacks, but rather the faulty laws that we have, which are the foundation of this nation. This documentary brings about many questions. Such as making one think how did America end up with the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world? or how did our prison population now go up to almost two million? I’m sure people wouldn't just think of these questions randomly. So with this documentary, it encouraged me to do some further research. After watching a film, or documentary rather, one should leave either inspired or enlightened. Touching on African Americans being portrayed as criminals, slavery replaced with mass incarceration, to the simple dehumanization of African Americans, these are definitely major and relevant topics that need to be discussed and ultimately

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