pensacolacomputer This documentary is one (very small) side to the story, but the other side is that statistics don't lie. I know a lot of black people blame the whites for all their problems and not take responsibility for their actions but they need to wake up. Educate yourself. Why are so many in jail? Trust me, not even .01% is because of racial injustice. Does prejudice exist? Sure. On BOTH sides.So why blame the whites? They did not put that gun in your hand, or make you smoke that drug, or make you not study in school, etc.. I do believe a lot has to do with the parents and the way people are raised but that is another topic for another time.So start being an upstanding member of society, and I guarantee you, people will start treating you that way. ALL LIVES MATTER.

TigerHeron This movie has some good information about the prison-industrial complex. But it contains misleading and even inaccurate information, conflates so many different things it becomes a jumbled mess and even ends up contradicting itself.The film does a good job, more than 30 minutes into its footage, of beginning to explain how many laws have been passed and prisons built solely for the purpose of corporate profits. What it doesn't explain is how and why the public supported those laws and prisons. The public didn't support mass incarceration in the 80s and 90s because of racism, which seems to be the film's argument. The public supported tough-on-crime measures because there was a massive crime wave related to the crack cocaine epidemic.If you are under 45 you wouldn't remember this, but Blackcommunities in the inner cities were under siege, with drive-by-shootings a regular occurrence. A local TV news station in Washington DC had a nightly program called "City Under Siege." You don't hear about this in Ava Duvernay's film. Her perspective seems to be that the crack epidemic was a fiction invented by white people. It most definitely was not a fiction and there was no similarity between the heavily armed drug gangs having shootouts on city streets and the suburban powder cocaine dealer who didn't own a gun and made home deliveries. If you want to know a bit what the crack epidemic and the drug gang shoot-outs were like see the films "New Jack City" and "Boyz in the Hood" which by the way were made by black people.Is the prison-industrial complex because of corporate greed, or is it because of racism? It can't be both because corporate greed doesn't care about racism. Incarcerating white people is also profitable.The film swings wildly at one point from Bill Clinton's policies such as "three strikes you're out" to the murder of Fred Hampton by police which I think took place around 1970, then to the fact Martin Luther King Jr. had an FBI file. The notion seems to be that it's all about black people being oppressed by law enforcement but it's offensive to conflate a petty criminal with a Black Panther with a non-violent protest leader. They all become the same, black victims, in this film. Historical epochs are meaningless in Duvernay's view because she thinks nothing has changed. This film is intellectually dishonest and verges on being paranoid.

Theo Robertson This is an Oscar nominated documentary . Its title is taken from the 13th amendment to the United States constitution which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude and apparently the disparity in rich and poor is so great in America that slavery still exists. I came to this documentary thinking that the documentary had a point. After all in America you have "workfare" where to receive state benefit you have to clean up litter etc . America still incorporates chain gangs and thankfully in Britain European Union legislation protects us from this exploitation which is nothing more than modern day slavery so yeah I came in to it ready to cheer for a classless society for my American brothers and sisters , fellow members of the international proletariat. Long before 13th finished I was actually booing The documentary comes in thee distinct parts and the first third is the worst. It gives a potted history of slavery in America and towards the end of this segment takes in the war against crime. What's the connection between the two ? Apparently it's all down to keeping the black population in their place and is a big conspiracy to criminalise blacks in order to jail them so they'd be slaves again. To be fair 13th that Richard Nixon introduced "the war on drugs" and Republican President Ronald Reagen took an even harder line. Common sense should tell someone the problem is if you outlaw a product then anyone who uses it becomes by definition an outlaw. But not here where it's all an excuse for right wing racist politicians to wage war on black people. This is all taken as fact so it's no good bringing statistics in to anything apart from the burgeoning prison population so I won't bother mentioning things like if America legalised all drugs and the state manufactured everything from weed to crack cocaine for dimes that cure a terrible problem and prohibition is bad because 13th wants to play the race card instead of talking sense To be fair it doesn't suffer from party politics bias because the Democrats are every bit as bad as the Republicans. Yes indeed Bill Clinton was pro death penalty and anti-crime , so much so a little known British Labour MP called Tony Blair went over to America to see how the slick spin doctors of the Democrats operated and came back with the slogan "Tough on crime tough on the causes of crime". Such a pity Blair never thought about winning a major battle against crime by legalising drugs. Even if you think Clinton and Blair were being draconian being anti-crime is a vote winner because everyone in general and lower class people in particular are the ones who suffer so why not give the electorate what they want? That's because it's all a big conspiracy to jail black people just for being black. As it turns out Clinton in shown in a clip saying he thought that his anti-crime legislation was a mistake. Why is it a mistake now ? Probably because like this documentary Clinton tells people what they want to hear and truth doesn't come in to it The second segment revolves around the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) which is responsible for amongst other things state level legislation and private prisons. Among other things it involves the "stand your ground law" where a person can use deadly force to protect themselves. It uses a high profile case that made worldwide headlines. Again the race card is used in this case but the fact is every state in America has a similar law, not just the states who have the stand your ground law, but again there's the insinuation that it's all a big conspiracy to put all the black people in jail. The third segment then tries to back up these statistics by pointing out the large number of black men jailed. Might it not be social rather than ethnic demographics have something to do with this ? ie if you're poor and white then you're more chance of going to jail than someone middle class and white ? And if you're black and committed a crime against a person might the person be black themselves ? Don't let an agenda get in the way of facts If nothing else 13th does go to show that Americans regardless of their background all seem to suffer from an irony deficiency we see a bunch of academics and politicians saying how much African Americans are suffering from institutional racism much of which is a conspiracy by a racist white elite. If this is the case then how on earth were the black academics and politicians interviewed able to get where they are ? If there was a conspiracy then I doubt if Ava Duvarney would have been able to make this documentary and Barack Obama would have never been allowed to run for President never mind winning two Presidential elections. It could be that people are conditioned in to being victims they will never get anywhere and despite being well made 13th is another contribution to keep the downtrodden proletariat in their place

fkdagain Fair warning: I am aware my review will be downvoted into oblivion like everyone else who recognized the film is a propaganda piece. If you're willing to recognize an alternate (but factual) viewpoint, carry on.This film had potential to be great, if it wasn't biased. For example, around 46 minutes, Assata Shakur is brought up, being called a revolutionary hero. However, the film intentionally left out why she was serving a lifetime prison sentence, so I looked it up. She was a gang member and a cop killer, and the entire Black Lives Matter movement (literally a terrorist group by definition) is based on her. In fact, her alternate name is being used in the film so you don't immediately recognize this (if you previously knew about her).But if this was included in the film, the argument would've fallen apart immediately. The film tried to use her as an example of the FBI going after a powerful black figurehead, such as with MLK. You cannot compare those two individuals simply because they're both black and both were wanted by the FBI. They were completely different people.Beyond that example, which is just one of many instances of the purposeful omission of key information, the film simply grabs at straws. The concept is based on the oppression and "slavery" of African Americans beyond the Civil Right Movement. Yes, obviously this did happen, and the film did present some significant examples, such as presidents and elite politicians subtly having racist motives.Where this film fails is by not addressing significant philosophical and sociological questions. It does not discuss how, because African Americans were oppressed and many lived in cities, they could not find work or they lived in poverty. And what happens when you live in poverty, regardless of race or ethnicity? You're more inclined to turn to drugs and crime. So there's a reason to be arrested. In fact, while the film tries to say black people were specifically hurt by certain laws, those laws hurt everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity.The film doesn't discuss how the black race is, unfortunately, largely represented by an urban subculture which glorifies crime and violence as a progressive result of poverty. The film would've been better if it introduced this, because then the interesting argument of a cycle is created:Black oppression > stereotypes > poverty > excessive drugs, violence, and crime > tougher laws > longer prison sentences > further emphasis on stereotypes and racismThe film completely blows over this, and instead basically says, "Black people did nothing wrong! It's all the white man's fault, trying to make us slaves again!" In the last three decades, there have been many, many important African American members of society who made something of themselves, fought their way out of economic hardship, and so on. How about Jimi Hendrix, Neil Tyson, Oprah, Michael Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, the former president, etc. What do they have in common? They weren't involved in that glorified subculture. In addition, the film is intended to be a combination of both black oppression and the insane incarceration rate in the USA, but it would've been better off not trying to say, "It's the white man's fault!" Discussing the prison-for-profit system and unfair poverty in the USA we have without incorporating a falsified perspective of racism would've been better.What you'll get here is a ridiculous argument about how the modern-day prison system is exactly like the post-slavery prison system, in which slaves were arrested for petty crimes to work for free again and rebuild the economy. The modern era is nothing like that, and does not unfairly affect blacks. It affects criminals.