T.I has always been very vocal about police brutality and the poor treatment of Black & Brown individuals. And to be frank, it remains essential for individuals with such powerful platforms like T.I. to speak out on such injustices to create effective change in the world. As such, police brutality remains both a sensitive and focal point of the public discourse when minorities are involved. Moreover, we have seen the ways in which technology now plays a major role in denouncing (and proving) the existence of bias. The untimely deaths of several unarmed Black & Brown youths at the hands of police only serve to affirm this point further. As such, T.I. shared quite a disturbing video on his Instagram page, revealing once more that racial discrimination and bias amongst the police forces is very much alive and kicking.
In the video, an unnamed individual films his arrest. The police officer involved toys with the man's life by claiming "he's got a gun!" Yet, everyone knows that minorities (especially Black men), have found themselves at the center of tragic incidents where police killed them simply out of the "belief" a weapon was present somewhere. After numerous requests of shutting the car off, the police officer is seen yielding a gun as the man behind the camera yells: "my hands are in the air." The video unveils that there is still much work to be done in terms of our police forces doing better by Black & Brown communities.