DailyView: Day 289, Movie 406

Ava DuVernay’s Academy Award nominated documentary is on Netflix and this continued my investment in the Black History Month for the DailyView.

13th is a deep look into the history of black people in the United States and the way the race has been attacked and imprisoned over the decades. She looks at the way presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and, especially, Bill Clinton used wording such as “war on drugs” or “law and order” as dog whistle politics.

The statistics shared about how the numbers of black people in prison were skyrocketing over the decades of the 70s, 80s and 90s was unbelievable. Matching the elevation of these numbers with the political world was fascinating.

The doc uses some great footage to illustrate the point and there are some good uses of the talking heads to pass on the information. Some of the clips of Donald Trump were extremely powerful, showing his thoughts and how those thoughts paint him. To be fair, they picked certain lines from Trump to illustrate their point, context be damned. However, I am not sure that the context would change much of this.

This was a good documentary and it provided some terrible numbers and can help open my eyes about the history of black people in America.