I did a research paper my senior, an internal assessment - an IA.

I did it on a topic that hit close to my roots:

Neoslavery.

It's a term that describes the period of time post-abolishment of slavery where slavery still happened.

Things such as Jim Crow laws, vagrancy violations, sharecropping

It was powerful stuff about my history, but you know what's crazy?

How I'm hearing about these things as background knowledge in my sociology class to talk about current mass incarceration statistics about black people.

Get that? Current.

My report was about post-1865 and it is 2017 for Christ's sake; it's been 152 whole ass years and this is not only still an issue, but has only progressed.

We've only gotten smarter since then so the loopholes that are being manipulated are way more intricate and smooth so it's a closed system that's practically impossible for us to prove ourselves innocent.

How are we still being beaten and being arrested and they're still getting away with it?

How are the numbers showing that we are the problem?

We get sentenced more, we get longer sentences, we get harsher sentences, we get everything and they get nothing.

They get the credit for putting away the gangsters and the hoodlums, and when it comes time to putting away their own people, it's nothing compared to our own.

Our brothers, our fathers are getting put away everyday then we have to hear the comments about not having male figureheads in our lives.

They get released and because they've been imprisoned they can never return to a normal life.

What kind of cycle is this? It makes no sense!

But really...why is this still a thing?

History isn't even repeating itself because what was happening never stopped,

and now we have some ignorant, racist, misogynistic president that is only going to let these things get worse.

The quote I used for my IA is how I'm going to end this because it explains it all:

Antoinette Harrell very accurately said,

“Slavery never ended and that's the point, it never ended. It just disguised itself in other forms.”