After watching this documentary numerous of times, I truly understand and feel the pain that every African American women and men endured and went through while getting wrongful accused by the Criminal Justice System. Not only did this film bring me closer than I’ve ever grown, but it also made me understand how my life could have been and how so many people who have grown could have possibly made life better for themselves even though they were adapted to the life of racism, slavery, and the Jim Crow Laws. This film makes you think of how it brings such an impact to not only how life would have been, but it also ties to the modern-day life which makes the whole documentary even more relevant. Not only did the film made me think about how life could have been, but it also made me feel a little emotional as well as surprised. Watching this film for the very first time made me surprised after seeing how the prison population growth has grown from 357,292 in 1970 to 513,900 10years later. It will make you think about how much the prison growth is now and will the past criminality ever start again. This film made me emotional because of the sweeping treatment that the African Americans had to go through during the times of slavery. I couldn’t imagine if me or my family had to go through anything like that.
Based off the documentary, the overall theme “Black Lives Matter “of the 13th documentary applies to minority groups such as Muslims, LGBTQ, and Immigrants. African Americans and the Black Live Matters shows how powerful the movement links with slavery. Being that the BLM is usually a call of action, African Americans and the other minority groups were rooted as having human beliefs that are already connected through the mission of social justice. With all that was happening with the movement and the incarceration the LGBTQ individuals, Muslim women and men, and Immigrants all portrayed a negative life. Not only did the minority groups showed links with slavery, they also applied civil and human rights that appealed and had the access of the Civil right movement.
After watching the documentary, the documentary did affect my perception of the events described in the documentary. I didn’t think that African Americans were really treated the way they were until I started watching the film. After watching the whites push around the black young man in the video basically beating him made me change my whole perspective of the film. It made think that all blacks were here for is to get beat up on and to be treated like nothing. Throughout the film, I did see myself making personal changes in my life after watching the documentary. At first, I saw myself having mixed emotions then later after finishing the entire film, I saw myself feeling angry. I felt as if nothing has really changed in todays society after watching it. Still today, there are some type of racism still going on somewhere in this world today as we speak. Seeing that the cycle was repeated over and over made me change my life. It taught me to “NEVER let anyone treat you the way that you shouldn’t be treated and to ALWAYS let your voice be heard “The quote “We are tolerating it” made me think why sit there and take all of this and tolerate this when you can make a complete change. Therefore, after watching the film I completely changed the way I thought and saw things.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies played a major role when it came down to the events stated in the documentary. Black people were expected to be criminals which were classified as Black Criminality. Being that the way that the white’s treated the blacks and how they spoke in a cold tone of voice and so forth, African American generally showed initial behavior and interactions with the whites responding in the same way as they were treated.