Topic > Themes Raised in Ava Duvernay's 13th Documentary

Ava DuVernay's documentary titled “13th” refers to the Thirteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Section 1 of the amendment, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, and accepted by the states on December 6, 1865, states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime of which the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” DuVernay's examination and focus in her documentary focused on issues relating to detention in the United States States that have the highest rate of incarceration and on America that represents 5% of the world's population but 25% of the world's prisoners He focused on the history of racial inequality, mistreatment, criminalization and the unequal majority of prisoners who belonged to the African American population and provided statistics showing that African Americans made up 6.5% of the US population and a vast 40% of the US population. the prison population. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay The discussions in the film were ongoing about the oppression that continued to abuse African Americans in the United States, even long after the law that made it illegal to force someone into slavery was ratified. Although the 13th Amendment was supposed to provide reassurance that involuntary servitude and slavery were prohibited, there was a part that created a serious loophole, an exception to this law. This part was found in section one of the amendment and read: “except as punishment for the crime of which the party shall have been duly convicted.” In the simplest form of understanding, this basically meant that slavery was illegal except as punishment for crime. The creation and basis of Duvernay's thirteenth documentary was the product of this loophole. Profit is what drove slavery and when slavery was abolished, the South was short four million slaves. The result of this issue led Southerners to devise new ways to balance economic growth. They began arresting African Americans and putting them in prison for trivial reasons such as loitering. African Americans were also known as “super predators.” This term presented a view of African American men as basically out-of-control animals and a threat to white men, to white women to be specific. After being arrested, they were subsequently used and placed as free labor for private individuals. The documentary provided statistics that one in three African American males would go to prison in his lifetime, while one in seventeen white Americans would go to prison. This was a demonstration of how racism was and still is a persistent factor and how discriminatory our criminal justice system still is. Duvernay's documentary gives us a compelling perspective on how today's prisons and workforce systems compare to slavery and how its practices still exist in today's society with mass incarceration. Prisons empower private companies to make millions using prisoners' free labor for profit. These societies depend on mass incarceration and the imprisonment of as many individuals as possible. One example the film talks about is the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which brought together politicians and businesses and..