A Short Overview of the Continuation of Structural Racism in the United States

How does the saying go “The more things change, the more they remain the same”. This paper gives an overview of how during the time of reconstruction – while the emancipation proclamation and the 13th amendment legally abolished slavery in the United States – the new laws were undermined by legal loopholes merging into solid segregation laws decades later, known as Jim Crow laws. This volume of Vantage Point touches on the untold story of forced labor under the convict leasing system and how it supplied labor force to former slave owners. Angela Davis argues, that slavery has never been truly abolished when she states “Well for one, the 13th amendment to the constitution of the US which abolished slavery – did not abolish slavery for those convicted of a crime.”