The New Jim Crow Film Analysis

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This documentary blew me away: it called me out on issues I didn’t even knew existed and filled in the gaps on my previously ignorant view of history. An underlying theme of the film was the continuous control of African-Americans under systems of racial control that have “appeared to die, but then are reborn in a new form tailored to the needs of the time” (Alexander). Hence, after the civil war, mass numbers of African Americans were arrested for trivial crimes like loitering. “It was our nation’s first prison boom,” Michelle Alexander, author of “The New Jim Crow,” explained. Though slavery was “officially outlawed,” loopholes such as convict leasing were born. States realized they could rent out their convicts to ex-plantation owners …show more content…
This era faded as well and was replaced by the system that holds precedence in our country today. This plague of mass incarceration disguises the barbaric values held by Ku Klux Klan members back in the 19th century; it once again has stripped millions of colored people of the very rights supposedly won for them over one hundred years ago. While they are not being sold to work the fields anymore, it is still detainment of a race that has been portrayed as inferior, even “dangerous.” The statistics of mass incarceration in general are jaw-dropping . For example, the United States has 5% of the world’s population, yet 25% of the world’s prison population, and the number has quadrupled in the past 40 years (NAACP). However, the data on the racial disparities in incarceration is even more appalling. According to the Bureau of Justice’s National Prisoner Statistics, African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites. Additionally, African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population (Moore). There is no getting around these staggering numbers. It is no coincidence that the African American population was and still is being targeted; it is no coincidence that the posterchild for …show more content…
"Ava DuVernay’s Netflix Film ’13th’ Reveals How Mass Incarceration Is an Extension of Slavery." The Washington Post. WP Company, 06 Oct. 2016. Web. 13 Mar. 2017.

Campbell, Taylor. "#WeBuiltThis: Black People Built America, and America Won't Stop Killing Us." The Root. Www.theroot.com, 22 Oct. 2016. Web. 13 Mar. 2017.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. Between the World and Me. Waterville, ME: Thorndike, a Part of Gale Cengage Learning, 2016. Print.

"Criminal Justice Fact Sheet." NAACP. N.p., 7 Apr. 2013. Web. 13 Mar. 2017.

DeRosa, Paul. "Was America Built By Slaves?" The American Interest. N.p., 07 Apr. 2016. Web. 13 Mar. 2017.

McInnis, Maurie D. "How the Slave Trade Built America." The New York Times. The New York Times, 03 Apr. 2015. Web. 13 Mar.

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