John Legend's Legendary Speech

Last week's Oscar's have the media world spinning; there is so much talk about the performances, winners, speeches, dresses, and more. I even wrote another blog post that focuses on the racist comment about a celebrity's hair. In this post, I'd like to focus on the powerful and moving acceptance speech of John Legend, one of the writers and singers of "Glory," the Oscar-winning song written for the movie "Selma."

In his acceptance speech for the award for Best Original Song, Legend brought national attention to the fact that the United States is "the most incarcerated country in the world." He goes on to state that "There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850." And he's right. In 1850, there were 872,924 African American men of 16 years or older enslaved in the today, there are about 1.68 million African American men under correctional control. (Remind anyone of Billy Dee's interpretation of the Prison Industrial Complex?)

Common and John Legend accepting the award for Best Original Song

United States. In the United States

Like his song "Glory," Legend's acceptance speech brought a very important and increasingly prevelent issue to national attention. (I wrote another blog post about "Glory" and its relevance to the United States today; please check it out if you don't know a lot about the song and would like to understand how it is still relevant today.) Although the song was written for a movie about events that took place 50 years ago, it's lyrics are still very relevant today. Similarly, although slavery is part of our nation's past, we see that an extension of it lives on in the incarceration of African American men. What Legend doesn't mention is how we might fix this problem of the overwhelming incarceration rate of African American men in the United States. (We talked about it a little in class while discussing the Prison Industrial Complex.) There is so much to consider when thinking about how we might fix this problem. First, how did this problem come about, and why? Why is the incarceration rate of African Americans increasing at such an alarming rate?