Tag: Race Relations

New Ava Duvernay Documentary Tells The Truth Behind Mass Incarceration In America

When some people talk about the effects of slavery in this country, they like to argue that it was a long time ago. And Black folk should get over it. The argument is flawed. Not only are we still dealing with the remnants of slavery; but the way the prison industrial complex is set up, slavery just took on a different form in this country. It is this topic that filmmaker Ava DuVernay explores in her new documentary 13th.

The new film will be screened at the upcoming New York Film Festival and will have a limited theatrical release. It will have a home on Netflix.

In the trailer alone different experts talk about how after the 13th amendment abolished slavery, with the exception of those sentenced to serve jail or prison time, the narrative that Black men were inherently dangerous and criminal became pervasive in this country. And now, today, 1 of four imprisoned people in the world are living in the United States. They specifically mention Kalief Browder, the 16-year-old who was thrown into Riker’s after he was wrongly accused of stealing a backpack. He spent three years in prison waiting for a trial, two of them in solitary confinement. Even after he was acquitted and released, he had a hard time adjusting afterward and eventually took his life.

The trailer also shows clips of both presidential candidates, Clinton, Trump and former president Bill Clinton using rhetoric that played right into this billion dollar system.

New York Film Festival Director Kent Jones hailed the film as an act of “true patriotism.”

DuVernay herself said, “This film was made as an answer to my own questions about how and why we have become the most incarcerated nation in the world, how and why we regard some of our citizens as innately criminal, and how and why good people allow this injustice to happen generation after generation. I thank Kent Jones and the selection committee for inviting me to share what I’ve learned.”

13th will be streaming on Netflix on October 7.

Originally posted on Madame Noire

Good Cop: Ohio Police Officer Drives Man He Pulled Over To Sister’s Funeral Over 100 Miles Away 

This Ohio police officer went above and beyond his job description when he offered to drive a man that he pulled over more than 100 miles to his sister’s funeral.

When Mark Ross heard the news that his 15-year-old sister was killed in a car accident, he wanted to find a way to be with his family as fast as he could.

Ross did not have a vehicle, so he asked a friend to drive him from Indiana to Detroit, Michigan, WJW reported.

Ross wrote in a Facebook post that police pulled them over as they were speeding through Ohio to get to Detroit.

Ross wrote in the post:

“I knew I was going to jail due to a petty warrant.” 

Ross was in the passenger seat when Trooper J. Davis pulled them over and arrested the driver for driving with a suspended license and on an outstanding warrant, Inside Edition reported.

The officer took the driver into custody and towed the vehicle, leaving Ross stranded in Ohio.

When Ohio State Highway Patrol Sergeant David Robison arrived, he offered to drive Ross more than 100 miles to his destination in Detroit.

“I broke down crying and he saw the sincerity in my cry. He REACHES OVER AND BEGAN PRAYING OVER ME AND MY FAMILY,” Ross wrote. “He offered to bring me 100 miles further to Detroit because they towed the vehicle. Everybody knows how much I dislike Cops but I am truly Greatful for this Guy. He gave me hope.”

Robison kept his word and drove Ross to a coffee shop in Detroit where he could meet his cousin.

“It was just so overwhelming,” Ross told Inside Edition. “They were trying to help us.”

Ross and his family were grateful for Robison’s generosity and invited him to the funeral.

“He’s actually going to attend the funeral,” Ross said.

Ross’s Facebook post has gone viral; it has been shared more than 100,000 times since Sunday.

Why can’t all “the coppers” be like this guy. This guy is an angel and definitely raises the bar. Salute SGT Robinson! 

FEATURED POST: Why Racial Bias Still Pervades America

That race remains one of our most vexing national issues – from bias in the sharing economy, to the lack of diversity in the executive ranks to the violence that plays out daily between communities and the police – comes as no surprise to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson. “There is a direct line between our history and the headlines you see today,” she says. “And nothing will improve until we address that history.”

It took her 15 years and over 1,200 interviews to finish The Warmth of Other Suns, the massive and beautifully rendered account of the slow but steady migration of six million African Americans from the violent repression of the Jim Crow South, to the North and West in search of a better life. The Great Migration lasted between 1916 and 1970 and reshaped America in ways that we are just now starting to understand.

It was a tough road. “The migrants were cast as poor illiterates, who imported out-of-wedlock births, joblessness and welfare dependency wherever they went,” Wilkerson writes.

Wilkerson’s extraordinary reporting, however, tells a different and more nuanced tale – one of risk, hard work, and achievement despite racial barriers that still exist in some forms. “It’s hard to imagine what it would be like if there was no Great Migration,” she says. “So many aspects of what we view as American culture were affected by this unleashing of pent up, unrecognized talent, creativity and ability, that had been withheld for centuries.”

An astonishing number of prominent African American executives, artists or athletes either are, or are direct descendants of, someone who took that perilous journey.

In a recent conversation, I asked Wilkerson to help explain what we get wrong about the Great Migration, and why it is imperative that business leaders closely study the difficult history that shapes our world in unseen ways.

“If there are disparities in how African Americans are making their way in the business world, and they are encountering barriers and assumptions, it is a direct manifestation of the unaddressed history of the world in which we all live. History can be a tremendous guide, and more of a comfort than people can imagine.”

Read the entire interview here, it has been lightly edited for clarity.