Django Unchained director Quentin Tarantino says that race relations in America have gotten a lot better, but that that the so-called War on Drugs has “decimated the black male population” and it is continuing for “all the same reasons they had for keeping slavery going.”

“It’s very depressing,” Tarantino told CBC host George Stroumboulopoulos. “This War on Drugs and the mass incarcerations that have happened pretty much for the last 40 years has just decimated the black male population. It’s slavery. It’s just slavery through and through.”

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“And it’s the same fear of the black male that existed back in the 1800s,” he explained. “Even having directed a movie about slavery and the things that we have in the slave town — the slave auction town where they’re moving back and forth — well, that looks like standing on the top tier of a prison system and watching the things go down. And between the private prisons and the public prisons and the way prisoners are traded back and forth.”

“And, literally, all the reason they had for keeping this going are all the same reason for keeping slavery going after the whole world had pretty much decided that that it was immoral: because it’s an industry.”

Watch this video form CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight, broadcast Dec. 18, 2012.

(h/t: Mediaite)