Blog: Cultural Divide: How Alabama rapper Rubberband OG navigates racism and violence on his hometown streets

The lives of African Americans resonated through film and art in 2018, notably Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman,” Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize and Michelle Obama’s best-selling memoir, “Becoming.” The era of Jim Crow’s systemic racism is long gone, but there are disturbing imbalances. Blacks make up about 13% of the U.S population, but account for roughly 40% of the incarcerated population, according to the Prison Policy Initiative. The median household income in Montgomery, a predominantly black city, was $46,545 in 2017, or more than $10,000 below the national median.