Moving through the first pages of Howard Zinn's "People's History Of The United States" to Michelle Alexander's "The New Jim Crow" to current events this micro-documentary covers slavery; indentured servants; Jim Crow; police brutality; the true level of poverty in the U.S. at fifty percent; current events (Sandra Bland, Samuel DuBose) and how most of this feeds the Prison Industrial Complex which already has too many of us in its teeth.
There isn't a lot that's new in the first 5 minutes, but it's concise and well presented. And the three tiered structure used as a framework, though hardly all inclusive racially speaking, makes the divide and conquer being used by the rich, from 1600s to now, very clear.
As for the last five minutes:
Half the country being low-income or below the poverty line will have me doing a little research. I had no idea.
I knew that 50% of Black Americans graduate high school. But I didn't know that only 75% of white Americans graduate high school.
For me, this is yet another reminder that it always pays to seek out the white statistic when you keep hearing a negative black statistic over and over again. The first time I learned this was when I found out Black on Black Crime and White on White Crime which both stay at or above 85% every single year. You wouldn't know that by how often "Black on Black" crime is mentioned by Black Americans much less the main stream news media. But this fact is easily found by looking at FBI UCR Data available online.
Give this video 2 minutes before you decide if you want to hear the whole thing. It covers a lot of ground in a short time.
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