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The effect of the 13th amendment essay
The problem of racial discrimination
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A “Powerful” film where the director, Ava DuVernay, shines a light on the unknown story about Thirteenth Amendment. The film provides insight on racial inequality primary the prison system. DuVernay decided this film should spark a conversation. I agree that this film starts the conversation about the racial inequality that the world needed to begin. The film is about the inequality that is happening in the United States, focusing on prisons that are filled mostly with African Americans. Starting with the Thirteenth Amendment, stating that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”, in other words everybody is free except for criminals. The film states that “After …show more content…
the Civil War, African Americans were arrested in masses.” (DuVernay). Thus, the battle of discrimination towards African Americans intensified. The film starts with the statistic that five percent of the world’s population is in the United States, but we also have twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners.
Then continues to explain about the increasing growth of American’s prison population through the years, which were mostly inhabited by African Americans. Ava DuVernay, the director, approaches the film in a chronological way where it shows how through the years, the amount of people in prison increases rapidly and shows why during specific years it increased. As stated before DuVernay uses the definition of the Thirteenth Amendment, stating that everyone is free except criminals. Thus, creating the label of “criminal” towards African Americans. DuVernay create credibility by using people. For example, DuVernay has Jelani Cobb, the director of the Institute for African American studies at the University of Connecticut, to explain labels given towards African Americans. Labels such as “the negro was out of control” or “there’s a threat of violence to white women”. At the same time DuVernay uses pictures and videos of lynching and of beatings as a result from said types of labels or false accusations really appeals to the emotional side of the
story. I was warned of the descriptive, brutal, and injustice pictures and videos of lynching’s and shootings, if needed could have left the room if felt uncomfortable. Even with this knowledge, it did not help prepare the over whelming fact this type of racial inequality had happened. This documentary illustrates the racial injustice felt by African Americans and helps the audience feel the emotions African Americans had felt. Through the chronological layout of the film, helps the audience can understand the emotions and problems that African American’s had about racial inequality.
It shows that Negros were able to purchase their freedom and purchase the freedom of their family members. It shows a sense of equality in the way that free blacks could go to court and potentially win cases against white farmers. Free blacks owning slaves and indentured servants, some of which were white, could also be seen as equality. It also shows how free blacks had a thought of a future in the way that they drew up wills in which their family members were granted land and livestock. Knowing that white farming landowners and free blacks lived together in a sense of harmony goes back to the main theme of Myne Owne Ground. It shows that slavery is indeed an embarrassment to our nation. Knowing that blacks and whites were able to live together, trade, and be civil towards each other shows that slavery was unfounded and not
trap African Americans in a virtual (and literal) cage,” he is saying that “Blacks are now incarcerated seven times as often as whites.” He is addressing that mass incarceration is another way to control black people. This leaves his readers shock realizing that slavery is happening all over again but in invisible way that people wouldn 't realize so easily.
While the formal abolition of slavery, on the 6th of December 1865 freed black Americans from their slave labour, they were still unequal to and discriminated by white Americans for the next century. This ‘freedom’, meant that black Americans ‘felt like a bird out of a cage’ , but this freedom from slavery did not equate to their complete liberty, rather they were kept in destitute through their economic, social, and political state.
The first social issue portrayed through the film is racial inequality. The audience witnesses the inequality in the film when justice is not properly served to the police officer who executed Oscar Grant. As shown through the film, the ind...
This shows us how white people thought of African Americans as inferior, and they just wanted to dominate the society making no place for other races to express themselves. Even though African Americans were citizens of the state of Mississippi they were still discriminated against. This documentary does a great job of showing us the suffering of these people in hopes to remind everyone, especially the government, to not make the same mistakes and discriminate against citizens no matter what their race is because this will only cause a division to our nation when everyone should be
In this story it clearly shows us what the courts really mean by freedom, equality, liberty, property and equal protection of the laws. The story traces the legal challenges that affected African Americans freedom. To justify slavery as the “the way things were” still begs to define what lied beneath slave owner’s abilities to look past the wounded eyes and beating hearts of the African Americans that were so brutally possessed.
The movie the 13th centralizes that African-Americans are often criminals or dangerous in the eyes of the law. Since the end of slavery black people has always been at a disadvantage here in America. The novel All American Boys tells a story about how a good black kid, Rashad, gets beat up by a cop and a white kid, Quinn, who goes to the same school and is the same age and grade as Rashad and is seen as this “All American Boy,” seen it and goes through about if it was right or not. Both the novel and the movie has something to do between the two races, white and black. There’s always something that happens to a black person that leads to controversy and news.
The 13th, a documentary by Ava DuVernay, was released this year on Netflix. The hour and forty minute film makes visible a link between slavery in the United States and the modern day prison system. Specifically, DuVernay looks at how race and the subjugation of black and brown bodies have been at the forefront of these modern day prisons. DuVernay nicely ties in the social and economic factors behind the mass incarceration related to the progression of the US on the backs of black bodies. Through the use of statistical data, it proves how pure racist reasoning in the United States has programmed both whites and blacks in America to fear the black body.
Most black Americans are under the control of the criminal justice today whether in parole or probation or whether in jail or prison. Accomplishments of the civil rights association have been challenged by mass incarceration of the African Americans in fighting drugs in the country. Although the Jim Crow laws are not so common, many African Americans are still arrested for very minor crimes. They remain disfranchised and marginalized and trapped by criminal justice that has named them felons and refuted them their rights to be free of lawful employment and discrimination and also education and other public benefits that other citizens enjoy. There is exists discernment in voting rights, employment, education and housing when it comes to privileges. In the, ‘the new Jim crow’ mass incarceration has been described to serve the same function as the post civil war Jim crow laws and pre civil war slavery. (Michelle 16) This essay would defend Michelle Alexander’s argument that mass incarcerations represent the ‘new Jim crow.’
This movie is a wonderful production starting from 1960 and ending in 1969 covering all the different things that occurred during this unbelievable decade. The movie takes place in many different areas starring two main families; a very suburban, white family who were excepting of blacks, and a very positive black family trying to push black rights in Mississippi. The movie portrayed many historical events while also including the families and how the two were intertwined. These families were very different, yet so much alike, they both portrayed what to me the whole ‘message’ of the movie was. Although everyone was so different they all faced such drastic decisions and issues that affected everyone in so many different ways. It wasn’t like one person’s pain was easier to handle than another is that’s like saying Vietnam was harder on those men than on the men that stood for black rights or vice versa, everyone faced these equally hard issues. So it seemed everyone was very emotionally involved. In fact our whole country was very involved in president elections and campaigns against the war, it seemed everyone really cared.
Michelle Alexander also brings to attention the hardship that these arrests bring onto people of colour after finishing their sentences. After the release from jail these people are faced with a total isolation from society, they can’t get jobs and therefore are forced into poverty. They are legally discriminated from housing, jobs, education, food stamps etc. Their lives are forever changed. Ex-offenders are constantly facing a legal discrimination upon their release, and Alexander compares this to the legal discrimination during Jim Crow. One of the main problems with the law enforcement according to Alexander is that they have locked this racial group into and inferior position in
The 13th documentary discusses two fundamental issues going on in our country. The power of money in profitable incarceration and the everlasting slavery. In 1865, when the 13th amendment was ratified, but little did the drafters know of the loophole they had left in the definition of one of the clauses. A clause that converts slavery from a legal business model to an equally legal method of punishment for criminals. This documentary did a very good job of not being biased and focusing on the facts.
The movie starts with the story of Rubin Carter and his fight for the middleweight championship. He lost the match in a rigged bout to a weaker opponent. Although, Rubin dominated the ring, he lost the title. The fight foreshadows the racial discrimination that will be played throughout the movie. Later in the movie in the Lafayette Grill two African-American males of middle build murdered three people at the all white establishment. Rubin Carter and John Artis were accused of being those two men. Carter and Artis went to prison for three life sentences. The future looks slim for Carter, however, a pivotal change comes when Lezra Martin discovers Carter's book.
Disillusioned, shocked, and at times, hopeful, the audience is left with the impression of not a moving documentary, but one that pushes them to move. Ava DuVernay starts her documentary, 13th, by highlighting the startling statistic that 25% of the world’s imprisoned population resides in the United States, despite having only 5% of the world’s total population. The reason behind this mass incarceration originates from the film’s name, the 13th Amendment, which provided a loophole for slavery in the clause “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted” (U.S. Const. amend. XIII.). This revealing statement, reiterated multiple times throughout the film, introduces the viewer to the argument that modern
brought to you by Wikipedia The Birth of a Nation It gave a view of how Society view the free man do to the 13 amendment is show us how the 13 amendment affected people mindset that that the minority group of the African American Community was shunned by the behavior of the movie calling them beasts and as sexually deprived animal mostly towards them males. In the birth of the a nation many roles were played by white actors in Black face they portrayed them as unintelligible and sexually aggressive towards white woman and the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic force stopping these Beast when the 13th amendment was in place Giving them their freedom. these characteristics in society are deem as criminal intention ,uncivilized people That should be locked away to keep the rest of society safe. associating them buy Theory as criminals meaning nobody will question if they were really innocent in the first