Racially Charged: America’s Misdemeanor Problem • Full Documentary
Racially Charged is a full documentary about America’s misdemeanor problem.
What the Racially Charged documentary shows
Racially Charged features voice over from Mahershala Ali. The film exposes how our country’s history of racial injustice evolved into an enormous abuse of criminal justice power. This system abuses 13 million people a year – most of them poor and people of color.
The film includes first-person accounts of those charged under the Black Codes of the Reconstruction era. In this way, it brings to light the unfolding of a powerful engine of profits and racial inequality. These accounts run parallel with the outrageous stories of people trapped in the system today. In addition, with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, this film provides historical context and examines America’s history of racist oppression.
Racially Charged: from the Black Codes to convict leasing
This happened after the civil war, and after abolition. Southern states repurposed their misdemeanor systems to criminalize and control the African-American labor pool. They arrested them and charged them with minor crimes. Then they punished them with fines they could not pay. They did this in order to lock them up and sell them back to private industry. The mechanism that they used is one that we still see today, that private industry acted as a surety.
Southern legislatures tried to re-inscribe a form of slavery through a system of laws called black codes. These codes essentially tip the hand of the South with respect to how it’s going to use the criminal justice system over the course of the next century. That use would coerce black people back to labor. By creating laws that criminalize and create convictions for Blacks, the South could enslave them again. It did so through the practice of convict leasing. Convict leasing allowed plantation owners, and in many cases corporations, to lease incarcerated people for forced labor. They leased them from the state government or county government.
The misdemeanor system as a gateway for police violence
As seen in the film, this misdemeanor system has led to the deaths of countless innocent black people. They include George Floyd and Eric Garner. Officers approached George Floyd because of a misdemeanor (using a fake $20 bill). Meanwhile, officers approached Garner for the misdemeanor offense of selling loose cigarettes.
Our misdemeanor system acts in many ways like a gateway for police violence. If we want justice for George Floyd we need to convict the cop who murdered him. However, we also need to dismantle the system that led to his murder.
Key takeaways
- Racially Charged features voice over from Mahershala Ali.
- Southern states repurposed their misdemeanor systems after the civil war and abolition.
- Convict leasing allowed plantation owners and corporations to lease incarcerated people for forced labor.
- The film says the misdemeanor system acts in many ways like a gateway for police violence.
Learn more about convict leasing on Wikipedia.
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