Director Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” captures some of the inhumanity associated with slavery back in the 1800s.
The institution separated families, tortured workers and committed other unspeakable acts on black Americans simply because of their skin color.
The director says today’s war on drugs is essentially the same in its treatment of the black population.
“This whole thing of the, this ‘war on drugs,’ and the mass incarcerations that have happened pretty much for the last 40 years has just decimated the black male population,” the filmmaker said on the show George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. “It’s slavery, it is just, it’s just slavery through and through, and it’s just the same fear of the black male that existed back in the 1800s.”
In addition, he says that the flesh-for-cash business of slavery mirrors that of the prison industrial complex.
“Especially having even directed a movie about slavery, and you know the scenes that we have in the slave town, the slave auction town, where they’re moving back and forth,” he said. “Well that looks like standing in the top tier of a prison system and watching the things go down. And between the private prisons and the public prisons, the way prisoners are traded back and forth.”
The Hollywood Reporter left out this snippet which ends the clip below.
“All the reasons that they had for keeping this going are all the same reasons they have for keeping slavery going after the whole world had pretty much decided that it was immoral. Because it’s an industry, one, what are we gonna do with all these people who are let loose, these black people let loose, and two, what are we gonna do about all the people who make money off this industry?”