Netflix’s Original Documentary Thirteenth

           I was dismayed upon hearing that President Barack Obama was the first sitting president to ever visit a prison. This was all the worse after having learned that there are more African Americans imprisoned today than there were slaves in the 1850s. As one interviewee put it, “once you are convicted of a crime, you are, in essence, a slave of the state.” Though this may sound dramatic, it’s true: there is a clause written into the 13^th amendment only allowing for the “involuntary servitude” of convicted criminals detained by the state. This criminality clause, as we have learned about race in general throughout the semester, is a tool used to exploit. The film points out the irony that one out of every four prisoners in the world is “locked up here in the land of the free.” It’s undeniable that this is a deeply racial issue – the criminalization of blacks allowed for the Southern economy to be rebuilt after the Civil War. Today, mass incarceration serves as the “New Jim Crow” due to African Americans being disproportionally represented in the criminal justice system by a massive amount

            When crack emerged as a cheaper form of powder cocaine, it became popular among African American populations who were experiencing heightened poverty; laws were passed to make sentencing and punishment far harsher for crack cocaine than for powder cocaine, adding to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans. The role of the president – past, current, future – has had profound impacts on this legislation pertaining to the criminal justice system. This consequently has profound impacts on the criminalization of blacks in the U.S, which has had profound impacts on all aspects of black communities across the country. Police violence is a reflection of mass incarceration, which authorizes brutal treatment of African Americans in order to be “tough on crime.”

The Nixon administration was particularly detrimental. John Ehrlichman, a key Nixon advisor, was (unknowingly) recorded exposing the truth of their agenda: “by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” The Reagan administration ratcheted up the War on Drugs, supposedly in response to a crack cocaine “crisis” in African American communities; though many believe that this escalation was announced before crack cocaine even arrived in most inner city neighborhoods. Bill Clinton contributed to the problem behind the guise of being “tough on crime.” 673,000 more people ended up in prison during Clinton’s administration – 235,000 more than during Reagan’s. He heaped mounds of coal on the fire: the three-strikes-and-you’re-out sentencing, mandatory minimums for crack and cocaine possession, huge funding of prisons (and additional funding for states that punished convicts severely), the limiting of judges ability to to determine sentences, and so on and so on.

As Common raps in his song “Letter to the Free” (which is featured in the film), “prison is a business, America’s the company.” Huge money is made off of the criminal justice system. It can be likened to slavery here, too, in that not only is it a pervasive institution, it is also a moneymaking business. There are a host of corporations benefiting off of mass incarceration, using inmate labor to produce products and goods. Think food supply companies like Aramark (yes, the same Aramark that provides our meals here at Rhodes), telecommunications companies like Global Tel* Link, healthcare companies like Corizon, telemarketing and call centers, clothing manufacturers like Victoria’s Secret and JCPenny, the technology sector, and the bail industry. The good news is, in August, Obama and the Department of Justice announced that the federal government would cease use of private prison facilities. The bad news is, though Hillary Clinton supported these measures, Trump does not – in fact, the morning after his election, the Corrections Corporations of America rose 40%. With Trump a successful business mogul, we should expect a continued rise in private prison stocks, especially due to his focus on immigration and crime.

When it seems as if bad news is relentless, and there is nothing we can do to stop the negative headlines from piling up, I have found myself asking what I can do. Though I don’t entirely know the answer to that question yet, I think we, as average Americans, should follow the lead of Civil Rights activists and employ the power of boycotts. It doesn’t take long to do the research necessary to find out just which companies are making money off of the criminalization and exploitation of black and brown Americans. We can stop giving them our money, we can expose them, we can spread these numbers, this history, and the implications of these policies as far and wide as possible. We can continue to educate ourselves and take advantage of opportunities to educate those around us on the ugly truth of mass incarceration. And we can unlearn the narrative we have been shown and told that African Americans, particularly African American men, are lazy, are criminals, and are at fault for the hardships they experience. The more we know, the better we can hold ourselves accountable and hold our officials and politicians accountable for the rhetoric and the policies that can devastate entire communities.

 OTHER SOURCES:

http://www.businessinsider.com/private-prison-stocks-are-soaring-after-donald-trumps-election-2016-11

https://newrepublic.com/article/129433/clintons-war-drugs-black-lives-didnt-matter

http://www.salon.com/2015/04/13/the_clinton_dynastys_horrific_legacy_how_tough_on_crime_politics_built_the_worlds_largest_prison/