“13th” Might Be This Generation’s “Rosewood”

The third time I watched 13th on Netflix, the much talked about documentary from Ava DuVernay, it was post election. Post the dream nightmare promise of a Trump presidency. It takes on new significance than my initial viewings. The cold opening of the documentary is the voice of President Obama stating that the United States has 5% of the world’s population, but houses 25% of the world’s prison population. That is an astounding number, but not that surprising for people that have long advocated for prison and justice reform. As the prison population has grown to over 2.6 million people, the film seeks to explain why we grossly populate our prisons so much more than any other country by a long shot. The answer, not so simply, that the documentary gives is that there is big business in policing, sentencing and jailing Black and Brown people. And business continues to boom. The film centers around the titular event of the 13th amendment to the Constitution, that statute that made slavery illegal. Except for the loophole that this didn’t apply to people that were prisoners or criminals. So what do you do if you’re the South and your economy hinged on free and enslaved labor that you can no longer access? Well, if there is a loophole to bring back that workforce without it collapsing your society, you probably exploit it. Hence, the rise of arrest or ways to categorize people as criminals. There are those that will oppose that theory as some kind of conspiracy theory, but then tha…