13th, Ava Duvernay: Film Analysis

S- summarize
In her film 13th, Ava DuVernay details the injustice of mass incarcerations and violence perpetuated by the Criminal Justice system of the United States. In her documentary, she sets the tone with a staggering statistic: a country with five percent of the world’s population hold twenty-five percent of all of the world’s prisoners. DuVernay creates a timeline to show the linear progression of African American’s movement into mass incarceration. DuVernay does this by starting at the end of slavery when black men and women were supposed to be made free. According to Khalil Muhammad, this left 4 million who were formerly slaves and an integral part of the southern economy free. In order to maintain the southern economy, the United
John Ehrlichman admitted that the enemy of Nixon’s white house was black people. The idea that someone who is supposed to hold power and protect what is right and fair uses race as a means of gaining political power is something that I do not understand (DuVernay 13th). Ehrlichman says “they couldn’t make it illegal to be black” so they would criminalize the black man on television as a means to skew the public’s perception of the black community (DuVernay 13th). President Nixon made it illegal to be black without writing into law. Therefore, the KKK and people like them could have a free reign over the lives of black Americans. Making violence something that black Americans felt they must be prepared to deal with at any given moment. This threat of violence meant that when black Americans tried to fight back against their oppression they were blamed for causing the violence in the first place. Running a country that has the mindset that black Americans are criminals who cannot be trusted. Conditions people to think black Americans will perpetrate violence given the chance. That notion then perpetuates institutional and internalized racism within both individual communities and the nation as a whole. When you criminalize an entire group of people, you are then able to invalidate their lives and experiences. Therefore, when black
In the beginning of the documentary, DuVernay discusses how economies were built upon the backs of slaves. When you think about this in terms of the “prison industrial complex” the US economy is still heavily reliant on slave labor. Davis states “Punishment no longer constitutes a marginal area of the larger economy” meaning that our economy is dependent on the labor of people in prison (Davis 88). This dependence is directly related to the United States’ inability to create goods and services, while also paying workers a living wage. Which ties back into the poverty of minorities in America. By using the prison system as a means of slavery, and then criminalizing black Americans big businesses can easily create profit without technically violating any human rights laws. However, we have to look deeper into the prison system to understand that the treatment of people once they enter the system. Once someone enters the Criminal Justice system they lose all personhood. By targeting black Americans specifically, the government is actively making the choice to create an environment where black American’s personhood is taken away before they have the chance to actually reach adulthood. This comes into play again with the use of the phrase “super predator” (DuVernay 13th). With the implications of the word super predator, black children are