Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Crime in the Media Fall 2020

13^th

The documentary I decided to watch is called 13^th. It is on Netflix and directed by Ava DuVernay created in 2016. 13^th is a documentary that is about scholars, activists, and politicians analyze the criminalization of African Americans in the US prison boom. DuVernay explores the history of racial inequality in the US, focusing on the fact that our nations prisons are disproportionately filled with African Americans. Watching this documentary really opened my eyes at how African Americans are the ones who usually are in prisons and how our justice system really isn’t fair when it comes to them. I like how this documentary educated me and inspired me to take a stand against racial injustice. This documentary is very informative about the American History of Black struggle and what it really means to be black in America.

Throughout this documentary, there were a lot of key points and great information brought to mine and other viewers’ attention. At the beginning, they talk about segregation and Jim Crow laws. We discussed this in class, and it was talked about in the book “Policing the Black Man” in Stevenson’s (2018). Jim Crow laws were created so the hanging and killings of African Americans was more legal. Laws were passed that regulated African Americans to a permanent second- class status. These individuals weren’t allowed to go anywhere where there were white people and that really took a toll on African Americans. Also, when the African Americans began deciding to integrate with white people that became very dangerous because they were being attacked on beaches and walking down the street that was meant for whites only (Stevenson, 2018).

The main events that were in this documentary was the Civil War. During this time this is when African Americans were taking a stand against white people and this became so dangerous but to them, being arrested was noble, but being arrested by white people was their worst nightmare. This perspective is just as relevant now as it was back then. We talk about this not only in this specific class, but in almost every class throughout our whole school career. Now I have to say that in today’s world it is not nearly as bad as it was back then, but there have been events that have transpired lately that bring up the events that happened in our history. Like in the book, there were two African American children assaulted by police and charged with non-chargeable crimes by police, and back then, African Americans were assaulted or thrown in jail for loitering. These are not chargeable offenses, and these two become parallel in the sense that this was all race based and these people wanted them abolished. Being arrested by white people now is still a big fear for African Americans, strictly because of our history and what they saw from their family member and their friends. These people voluntarily defined a movement around getting arrested. Their main problem was trying to get people to understand that they are actual human beings. When the Civil Rights movement was getting on its feet and finally beginning to make progress, crime rates in the baby boom generation were greatly increasing. I believe that they decided to progress with the Civil Rights movement strictly because they wanted a reason to arrest African Americans since the crime rates were so high. “… And that if we were to give Negros their freedom, then we would be repaid, as a nation, with crime” (13^th 2016. DuVernay).

The prison population is something we also talked about in class and it gets brought up in the documentary. In the film it talks about how the prison population in the United States was largely flat throughout most of the 20^th century. In the book “Policing the Black Man” it reads, “African Americans are 2.5 times more likely to be arrested than whites and 49 percent of black men can expect to be arrested at least once by age twenty-three…” (Davis, 2018, pp. xv-xv). This part in the text really relates to this portion of the documentary. We talked about how African Americans are the ones who are most likely in jail rather than whites, and that is how it was in the 1970s. Mass incarceration was in full effect during this time period. In 1970, the prison population was at 357,292.  Richard Nixon talked mainly about the war on crime, but that was one of those code words, which was really referring to the black political movements of the day and a bunch of other movements that became active. Nixon was up against everyone protesting and waged a war on drugs. This is also when tons of people went to jail for minor drug offenses and was called the Southern Strategy. All of this tied into Nixon being a racist and just not being able to verbally say that he believes it is only about people. He wanted to associate blacks with heroin to send them to jail.

This content added to my understanding of this issue in various ways. Even though slavery was over in the 1800’s, they still had integration issues and was very serious in the 60-80’s. African Americans are human beings, and watching this documentary really made my heart hurt. I cannot possibly imagine or understand what all these people went through, and in today’s day and age I see history repeating itself. With police brutality, protests, hate crimes increasing, this is just a fraction of what went on back then, but still it is scary to see that African Americans still aren’t being treated fairly.

References

Davis, A.J. (2018). Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment. Vintage Books.

Stevenson, B. (2018). A presumption of guilt: The legacy of America’s history of racial injustice. In A. J. Davis, Policing the Black Man: Arrest, Prosecution, and Imprisonment (pp.3-20). Vintage Books.