Documentary Movie 13th.
Documentary Movie 13th
Watch the film documentary 13th (Available on Netflix too). Make sure your answers are complete, and take time particularly with the opinion questions. Those answers should be well thought out and you are encouraged to refer to earlier concepts, films or readings in your answers 1. At the beginning of 13th, there’s a quote saying, “Whites are the products of a history our ancestors chose. If you are black, you are the product of a history your ancestors probably did not choose.” What does that mean? Is the reconciliation of those two issues a key to bridging inequality and how so? 2. After the Civil War, white political elites and the business establishment needed blacks working to rebuild the South. They did it by casting black men as criminal, and particularly as a threat to white women. How has that played out in what we’ve studied so far? How can you relate it to today? 3. The film jumps around in its chronology. However, there’s a timeline of African American exploitation, oppression and terror from the film. Write that timeline. 4. How does the history of African American criminality play out in American politics? How have politicians from Nixon to Clinton used fear of African American criminality to win elections? 5. Professor Jelani Cobb said that African Americans are “something other than a visceral image of criminality, menace and threat.” Relate that to the current day and Amber Guyger’s killing of Botham Jean. What do you think went through Guyger’s mind when she saw a black man sitting on what she thought was her couch? 6. Why was Richard Nixon so militaristic in his language about crime? 7. “America’s public enemy no. 1 is drug abuse. In order to fight and defeat this enemy, it is necessary to wage a new all-out offensive.” –President Nixon on drug abuse. What were his other options in battling drug abuse? 8. “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and the blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily, we could arrest their leaders and disrupt their communities, raid their homes, break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” How was this quote from Nixon advisor John Erhichman related to the Southern Strategy? What precedent did it set for future politicians? 9. What tactic did George H.W. Bush use to overcome a double-digit lead and defeat Michael Dukakis in the 1992 election? 10. Craig DeRoche said that what Bill Clinton did in 1994 was far worse than what his Republican predecessors did in terms of mass incarceration. Why? 11. Nearly a million people were put in jail during the Clinton years, many of them did not belong there. As the film says, it forced families to be broken; it forced children to grow up without their parents. Is that comparable to children being separated in detention centers on the Southern border? If so, how? 12. According to Van Jones, why couldn’t the black community defend itself against mass incarceration and the onslaught brought on by the 1994 crime bill? 13. At around the 51:00 minute mark of the documentary, Angela Davis is being interviewed and asked if violence can accomplish the goal of opportunity for black people. Look at the interview closely. Why does Davis become emotional at the end? What does it say about the difference between of how violence is experienced by black and white people throughout American history?