In an interview about his latest movie, Django Unchained director Quentin Tarantino spoke about what he views as injustices in this country, particularly in regards to race. Taking aim at the “War on Drugs” and “mass incarcerations” specifically, Tarantino remarked that “it’s just slavery.”

In terms of the conversation about race in America, the filmmaker said things have gotten better but “on a bigger level, it’s very depressing.”

“This whole thing of 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,” Tarantino said on Canadian talk show George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight. “It’s slavery, it is just, it’s just slavery through and through, and it’s just the same fear of the black male that existed back in the 1800s.”

He continued:

I mean, especially having even directed a movie about slavery, and you know the scenes that we have in the slave town, the slave auction town, where they’re moving back and forth. Well that looks like standing in the top tier of a prison system and watching the things go down.

And between the private prisons and the public prisons, the way prisoners are traded back and forth. And literally all the reasons that they have for keeping this going are all the same reasons they had for keeping slavery going after the whole world had pretty much decided that it was immoral.

Watch his remarks below: