Being that it is black history month, it is essential to understand the reality of the world we live in today. Slavery HAS NOT been abolished. We had it engraved in our minds since a young age that slavery ended in 1865. However, it was not.
The thirteenth amendment granted freedom to all Americans: yet it contains a loophole in which it excludes criminals. In other words if a person is being criminalized, the thirteenth amendment does not apply. Take this exploitation of a clause, added with 100 years of racial tension (since the creation of the thirteenth amendment to the civil rights movement) plus an indefinite “war on drugs” which was truthfully a war on people of color and low-income communities and you get to here. The United States of America, 2019. Home to 5% of the world’s population and yet where 25% of the world’s prisoners are locked up. 1 out of 4 people is being held in shackles here, in the land of the free.
Hey Ashley,
I agree with you that slavery has not been completely abolished 200 years after it was legally abolished. I also believe that racism is still very big as well. Although the civil rights movement in the 1960’s helped ease racial tension in America, I feel as if the political work achieved by civil rights leaders such as Dr Martin Luther King Jr. who dedicated his life to fighting racism in America is being reversed. With a president like Trump who’s obviously racist, and continues to make racially motivated decisions, I am concerned high class & private institutions are feeding off of Trump’s racial disrespect towards other cultures & that will fuel racial tension among their staffs and customers. For example, in the prison system, an African American inmate will more likely be restrained with shackles and excess force compared to a Caucasian inmate. If our own president is evidently racist, how will America ever be the land of the free? Why do you think 25% of the world’s prisoners are locked up in a democratic country like America opposed to an autocracy country such as Cuba?
Justin D.