Slavery in the United States was never abolished – it simply changed shape, allowing the government, corporations, and individuals to continue to profit off the oppression and exploitation of men, women, and children since the 13th Amendment of the constitution was ratified in 1865.
The 13th Amendment, which legalises slavery in the case of incarceration, has spawned a massive prison industrial complex. Although the US is a mere 5 per cent of the world’s population, it accounts for 25 per cent of the prisoners in the world – with 2.2 million people behind bars today. Invariably, race plays a major factor in who is imprisoned, with the police, courts, and legal system working against American citizens of African and Latinx communities for the past 150 years.
It is important to note that the first prisons came into being after the south lost the Civil War and their economy collapsed. Former slaves were arrested en masse on misdemeanour charges like loitering and vagrancy, forced to perform hard labour to rebuild the south during the Reconstruction era. For the next century, Hollywood entertainment and the mainstream media did their part to villainise and vilify black and Latinx citizens, disproportionately representing them as criminals.
[For more on this story by Miss Rosen, go to http://www.dazeddigital.com/ar...a-nicole-r-fleetwood]
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