Final essay. 13th by Ava DuVernay. Brief Synopsis.

13th by Ava DuVernay
Name of Student
Institutional Affiliation
13th by Ava DuVernay
Brief Synopsis
13th by Ava DuVernay is a powerful documentary about the thirteenth amendment of the United States Constitution and how the words in within the amendment have been used to find loopholes that are used to legally enslave Americans, especially people of ethnic minorities. The thirteenth amendment abolished slavery in 1865 but within it are embedded the words: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,” (DuVernay, 2016). Of note in the statement is the ‘exception clause’ inserted which basically allows those incarcerated to be treated as slaves of the state. This ‘exception clause’ has formed a devastating loophole that has been exploited by politicians and corporations over the years to engineer a system that incarcerates people for the smallest of crimes leading to the culture of mass incarceration that we now see in the United States.
The documentary provides a historical background of racial discrimination spanning over a hundred and fifty years, from the great American Civil War to the modern times. It directly links these racial issues with the prison-industrial complex that has led to the increase of the rates of incarceration in the county. Importantly, the documentary links slavery with the corresponding rise in the number of African Americans that have been incarcerated since the abolition of slavery, a culture that has become to known as the “mythology of black criminality.” This notion and culture began immediately after the Civil war when African Americans were arrested in masses for minor offences so they could provide free labor as prisoners in the south. It continued into the modern era where prisons are contracted by huge corporations to provide cheap labor.
In a step by step narration, the movie goes back to the Him Crow era where African Americans were indiscriminately murdered, butchered and tortured under the assumption that any black person was highly likely to be a criminal. The end of the Jim Crow era saw the beginning of the Civil Right Movement that arose due to the empowerment of minority to fight for equal rights and desegregation of public facilities such as schools. This lead to the introduction of the Voting Rights Act that aimed to remove the legal barriers that had previously prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote under the constitution (Bundles, 2015). One would think that this would be the end of racial discrimination and to some level slavery, but that was not to be. According to Ava DuVernay, and indirect form of racial control arose where words such as “law and order” and “war on crime” were used to start a fresh wave of open violence and discrimination against African Americans and Latinos.
The documentary exposes political strategies such as the “Southern Strategy” which was meant to appeal to white voters while decimating a significant chunk of the black communities. The war on drugs targeted minority communities as seen in the sentencing discrepancies for crack and powder cocaine. Crack was mainly used in poorer neighborhoods occupied by black people and Latinos and its possession usually attracted longer jail terms leading to mass incarceration of these groups. The labelling of Black Americans as “super predators,” the adoption of the “three strikes and you are out” legislation, and the 1994 crime bill all acted as political weapons which forced millions of black people to be arrested and incarcerated. Throughout the documentary, disturbing images of brutality against African Americans accompanied with supporting statistics can be seen. The number of people incarcerated in the United States has grown by almost ten times in the last 35 years and a large percentage of them are black people. Ava DuVernay calls for the humanization of the justice system and for racial justice in this heart-rending but educational film.
Discussion
Viewing the documentary 13th by Ava DuVernay inspires a wide range of emotions. It is difficult to isolate which emotion was dominantly stirred but the documentary left the feeling that something should be done. Watching the video footage of police and racial brutality raises the feeling of helplessness. The troubling prison industrial complex created by the ordeals people like Jordan Davis, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Kalief Browder, Michael Brown, and Trayvon Martin among others almost makes one give up hope of a better future. However, also watching how people reacted and rose up against oppression for equal rights ultimately gets rid of the helplessness and empowers people with the will to fight. People like Martin Luther, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Malcolm X played important roles in empowering black people to fight for what is right to a certain degree of success. The story of Angela Davis is particularly inspiring considering how she single-handedly took on the justice system and won. Her story is one of the special few on those who went up against the government and did not end up incarcerated or killed. However, she went through a fair deal of persecution despite her temporary victory.
The message of the film can, therefore, be interpreted as a hopeful one. Few people succeeded in fighting racial injustices and lived to talk about it means it is possible to enact change if we fight hard enough. Additionally, small victories such as the 13th amendment, the Voting Rights Act, and the Supreme Court’s Brown v Board of Education that desegregated schools show that the system, even though difficu...