Mass incarceration has been a growing problem in the United States for decades. Over two million people in the US are imprisoned right now. But this problem is rarely discussed in a larger context that acknowledges its roots. Director Ava DuVernay decided to make a documentary about it. 13th is a documentary that was recently released on Netflix, and it discusses how the Thirteenth Amendment, which claims to have abolished slavery, actually gave future governments a loophole to continue enforcing a kind of slavery.
"Neither slavery not involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." These are the words of the Thirteenth Amendment, the one that is revered, praised on high for bringing equality to the nation. But following its implementation, as DuVernay and her many guest speakers point out, slavery was replaced with law-writ forms of oppression and degradation. Following D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915), the nation saw a spike in membership in the Ku Klux Klan, and a subsequent spike in the number of murders and lynches of black Americans at the hands of white mobs. Bryan Stevenson points out the these heinous acts had been committed "under the idea that [black Americans] had done something criminal" (DuVernay, 2016). So soon after the Thirteenth Amendment had been put in place, white politicians were using the loophole to destroy black lives. DuVernay powerfully explains this with testimonies from historians, professors, and activists, most of whom spend their lives teaching others of the realities of racism and oppression.
DuVernay then goes and explains the political roots of mass incarceration. The war on drugs, mainly, is what has criminalized people of color. Especially important is the conflicting mandatory sentences for powder and crack cocaine, which seek to penalize people of color more harshly for their crimes. During the Nixon period, crime and criminal are thrown around discriminately to produce the image of a black man when one thinks of a criminal. DuVernay concludes her documentary by pulling Donald Trump, among other prominent politicians of today, into the picture and exposing them for their racist rhetoric and actions. There is an especially harrowing clip that overlays Trump's speeches over historical and current footage of Black Americans getting yelled at and attacked by white people.
DuVernay's powerful documentary utilizes the testimony of accredited black historians, teachers, and activists to pull together a comprehensive look at the progress of racism in this country through the law. She effectively uses old and new news footage, in conjunction with the rhetoric of old and new politicians to provide a tangible link between US politics and the emergence of mass incarceration as a reincarnation of the slave system. 13th is a powerful and important documentary, one that provides an easy to understand run down of the presence of racism in this country.
