Last night, Atlanta mayoral candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms beat out her competition and became the city's newest civic leader. Of all the support that she had been getting leading up to and including last night's vote, perhaps no one vocalized it louder within the hip-hop community than T.I. After the decision had been handed out last night, he decided to respond via social media.
His closing words said it all: "Congratulations Keisha." However, the bulk of his short bit of footage deals with the seemingly negative backlash that supposedly followed Bottoms' victory. In T.I.'s mind, this was a great win for minorities in the city of Atlanta and they should be able to express it fully and completely.
"When you are an oppressed people, you take your victories personally," he said to the camera. "And when you are an oppressed people, you take all the opposing people to your victory personally. And for you to pretend that this doesn't exist, it makes you just as bad as the oppressors," he added, speaking specifically to a local news crew who supposedly expressed doubt in the validity of the result.
However, the margin of victory for Bottoms was thin enough that her opponent, Mary Norwood, is demanding a recount. That process will take place this coming Saturday (December 9th), according to CNN. A Norwood victory would make her the city's first white mayor in more than 40 years. The majority of Atlanta's population remains African-American, although that demographic stronghold has loosened in recent years.