Have you ever felt sick to your stomach after watching something? Have you ever choked on sobs from the sight of an unimaginable act of violence? Have you ever watched something and had to vomit because it’s as if your body cannot physically stomach so much evil?

If not, you’ve probably never seen the footage of Martin Luther King Jr. leading the march to Selma while policemen beat down innocent men and women and pelt them with gas bombs or Eric Garner crying out “I can’t breath! I can’t breath! I can’t breath!” over and over again as his face presses into the sidewalk of New York City. If you had seen this, it’s likely you would feel anger burn in your chest and tears well in your eyes and the need to look away.

How could you witness such injustice and not react? I couldn’t. I won’t. I can’t look the other way.

On Thursday night I sat down and watched the new Netflix original documentary “13th” which focuses on the issue of mass incarceration in the United States of America. It honestly made my skin crawl.

After the credits rolled and I left my brother’s apartment, I tried to walk the block and a half to my car but had to stop, lean against a tree and dry heave. I cursed myself for not having anything to throw up; cursed myself for not knowing the terrible things that have happened in my own country and continue to happen; cursed the very soil I walk upon day in and day out that is owned and operated by a broken and fragmented system.

"13th" highlighted the history of imprisonment in America, especially the imprisonment of African Americans. The 13th amendment, written in 1865, states, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” This made the enslavement of people, black people, illegal except in the case of someone who has committed a crime, and is therefore imprisoned.

This makes sense, right? If someone breaks the law they can be slaves, void of human dignity and human rights. No! That doesn’t make sense! But it was a loophole in the 13th amendment, which makes sense economically. When freedom was granted to slaves the biggest source of free labor was stripped and left the economy ready to collapse. What could be done to fix this problem? Arresting a multitude of men could create a new group of slaves, after all it was legal according the the 13th amendment.

Here's some history:

After the emancipation proclamation and the drafting of the 13th amendment, depictions of black men as rapists, murderers and lawless men showed up in newspapers, books and, in 1915, the blockbuster film “The Birth of a Nation.” This film featured KKK members as main characters and shows multiple scenes of black men who rambled around like animals looking for white girls to rape. It was terrible and absolutely intentional.

All the while, real life cases of black men raping white women, murdering white citizens and generally being uncontrollable criminals began to surface across the south, leading to the arrest of mass amounts of black males – a solution to the absence of slavery.

These cases were reported, tried, and judged in front of a white judge and jury, making the judicial process almost entirely unreliable and the sentence likely unfounded seeing that extreme racial discrimination at that time. In truth, more lynching of black men by white KKK members was taking place and nearly all interracial rape was performed by white men against black women.

Going forward, the incarceration rates in the USA flattened out mostly until the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, during which time the civil rights movement rose to it’s peak. Black men and women were being arrested and abused in response to their protest of the oppression and violence that was being afflicted. This was the time of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Panthers movement.

Following this, Richard Nixon, who began the war on crime and drug abuse, enacted measures which led to incarceration numbers rising even more. Throughout the presidencies of Nixon, Reagan and Clinton, arrests of black males skyrocketed and the coverage of animalized black males in America.

Creating minimum sentences for crack cocaine (a drug that ran primarily in inner cities filled with colored communities) that were immensely higher than the sentences for powder cocaine (a different form of the drug that was found almost entirely in white suburban areas), caused massive numbers of black males to be arrested. This ripped apart families permanently because the sentences for drug abuse were and are so long.

This is not to say that drugs should be encouraged or that the people imprisoned in America are not guilty of crimes. However, instead of treating addiction and drug dependency as a health problem that needed to be addressed, it was tackled by police forces in militaristic fashion as a criminal and lifelong offense.

The drug problem in America, especially the one affecting minority neighborhoods today, could have been fixed if the millions of dollars poured into arresting primarily poor, colored people had been poured into rehabilitation.

Currently, America makes up 4.4% of the world population, and holds 22% of the world’s prisoners. Black men make up roughly 35% of jail inmates but only 6.1% of the U.S. population, making them far more likely to be imprisoned than white men (Hispanics are also more likely to be imprisoned (1 in 36) than white men (1 in 106)). The Bureau of Justice Statistics show that one out of every three black men can expect to be imprisoned in their lifetime.

One in three.

Something here is wrong. An awful lot of people are behind bars for being in the “land of the free.” There is so much more to the story than meets the eye, but it’s terrifying and it’s its own Pandora’s box because it forces everyone, myself included, the peel back the curtain and see what’s really happening in the U.S. justice system.

It forces us out of the cut and dry world we know and shoves us into a new one that's messy and turbulent. More than anything, it forces us to open our eyes to the reality that racism is not a thing of the past, the playing field is not fair for everyone and violent injustice still takes place daily.

If you feel bothered, if you have questions, if you are dissatisfied with what I have to tell you, then... good!

Go watch "13th."

Ask questions. Look at the screen when black lives matter protesters get punched in the back and the violence is encouraged. Turn on the sound and listen to Eric Garner saying he can’t breath. Don’t look away. Let yourself throw up, because this nation is very sick and the disease runs deep. All the way back to the 13th amendment.