You Don’t Always Have To Trust the Media Essay Example

incited many acts of violence against blacks and caused many of them to flee to different areas of the country. After a while, the “lynch mobs” and killings of blacks stopped and were replaced with segregation, discrimination, and Jim Crow laws. Out of these circumstances, the civil rights movement of the 1960s came to be. The civil rights movement passed and gave blacks equal rights, but oppression did not just disappear.

In 1971, the Nixon administration announced the “War on Drugs” that was aimed at preventing of the use of illegal substances. In 1984 crack became an epidemic in the black community. Although it is almost the same thing as cocaine, crack carries a much heftier sentence for possession than did cocaine. The documentaries reason for this is that crack was an “urban” issue and cocaine was a “suburban” issue. This again led to mass incarceration of blacks. Because of these harsher sentences, the “War on Drugs” was viewed as a “War on Minorities”. These mass arrests coupled with TV shows like cops that show audiences these arrests every night led to the furtherance of the perception of black criminality. (DuVernay)

With all of these people being arrested, the state needs to have prisons to keep them in. This creates a certain opportunity for companies to seek a profit. An example that the film used was ALEC. ALEC is a group that drafts bills and uses congressional representatives and senators to introduce them to congress. Members of this group include companies that are private contractors for prisons. Simply put, laws drafted by ALEC that lead to more people put in prison equal more profits for the privatized

prison industry. The documentary refers to this as the Prison-Industrial Complex. 13th implies that these laws just so happen to target African-Americans and other minorities. (DuVernay)

Now that the documentaries point of view is established, the actual historical context can be examined. The documentary has several things that are true and several things that are very inaccurate in its portrayal of race in America. Up to the civil rights movement, the documentary is accurate in its depiction of race. Meaning that it explained the thirteenth amendment and its subsequent effects correctly. In addition to this an article put out by the American Journal of Economics and Sociology states that the criminal justice system targets African-Americans  keep racial disparity a part of modern culture. (Rosino)

After the civil rights movement the film's view of race starts to be skewed. First, the film portrayed the Black Panthers, a black rights activist group in the 60s, as a solely peaceful activist but in reality, they were not. (Jimbo) Another way that that he documentary miss represents race in America is by overstated statistics and careful edits to conceal the whole truth. For example, incarceration rates have remained mainly static between 2000 and 2013, only increasing by around 180,000 prisoners. (Jimbo) Another example, is the Travon Martin case that the documentary brings up as an example of oppression in society. This is not a good example because police reports of the incident suggest that Martin was, in fact, the aggressor in that situation instead of an innocent victim that the documentary shows. (Jimbo)

Overall, the documentary portrays some parts of race in America correctly and other parts incorrectly. The documentary representation of

race can be boiled down to blacks and other minorities are victims of a system of white oppression. In reality, this film used carefully selected statistics, situations, and out of context editing to get make its point.