Director Ava DuVernay’s new documentary “13th” explores how mass incarceration in the United States, which disproportionately affects African Americans, reflects the injustice of slavery.
DuVernay, who received an Academy Award nomination for “Selma” in 2014, said in an interview the film “may shake up everything you thought you already knew about racial equality in America. And that’s just what it’s designed to do.”
The NAACP’s criminal justice fact sheet states, “African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites.” Legislation such as the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, a sprawling criminal justice bill that received bipartisan support, created mandatory minimum sentences that disproportionately affected African Americans and Latinos.
