Everyone really needs to watch 13th on Netflix

If you have not watched the Netflix documentary “13th,” then please stop what you are doing and watch it immediately. Especially within the context of this class, this Oscar nominated film is simultaneously shocking and completely expected. The film is told from the perspective of several different scholars on the topic of race and racial history in America as they explain the connection between the astronomical incarceration rates in the US and the 13^th amendment to the Constitution. The documentary seeks to prove that the expanse of the US prison system is a direct product of the stipulation in the 13^th amendment that states “Neither slavery nor involuntary service, except as a punishment for crime…” which allows the enslavement of any individual convicted of a crime. When the amendment was passed in 1865, its intent was to promise freedom for all Americans. The scholars in the film describe the reference to criminals in the amendment as a 'loophole' for the American government.

For the Southern states, emancipation meant losing a huge free-labor work force that previously drove the southern economy. In the ten years after emancipation, black people were arrested in the thousands for petty crimes and forced do hard labor in chain gangs, a systematic way around the emancipation amendment. From there, the criminalization of black bodies intensified. In order to gain more bodies for hard labor, the state had a stake in the degradation of black people by way of depicting blackness as a terror to white communities. Films like “Birth of a Nation” characterized this socially accepted norm, enforcing the idea that black men were inherently dangerous to white women. The widespread impact of this film led to the resurgence of the KKK, which led to mass lynchings around the American South and beyond. Events that were sensationalized in the newspapers as punishment for criminal behavior. When lynching became distasteful for the image of the South, the government turned to the legal criminalization of black people through segregation laws. The Jim Crow South wreaked havoc on black communities in the American South, forcing a mass migration of black people to cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston.

The list could go on and on. A causation chain of events that have led to present day. We can still see this intentional criminalization of black people in the way the media describes black men and degrades black woman. The way we talk about the BLM movement and Michele Obama are not new concepts stemming from thin air. The state of race relations in America has immense historical precedent, repeating itself over and over again. For every freedom granted to minority groups, there is a systematic obstacle intentionally placed to undermine that equality. Until the reality of our nation’s history can be fully and accurately grappled with, there is no saying how many times history will repeat itself. This topic was covered in the first fifteen minutes of the film, which goes to show how much amazing content this film covers in under two hours. There is a wealth of knowledge and resources to learn the a more accurate version of American history, master narrative omitted. There just needs to be more people talking about documentaries like this and maybe outrage can catalyze change.