Tyler Perry has penned a moving op-ed for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, titled “Flying while Black shouldn’t be a crime,” that offers insight into the decision that he and 10 other Black actors and directors made in filing a friend-of-the-court brief as part of a major racial discrimination lawsuit against the police department in Clayton County. 

In the article, Perry details how comedians Eric André and Clayton English were racially profiled and harassed by local law enforcement while traveling through Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport in 2021, and discusses how the widespread problem of racial profiling and discrimination carried out by law enforcement affects Black people in Atlanta and beyond.

“Every act of racial discrimination is a broken promise, an affront to our dignity, an insult to Atlanta’s history and a vestige of a history that America must leave behind,” Perry writes. “This must stop. Civic leaders should see to that. And if not, it is my hope that the judiciary will weigh in and affirm the obvious: Racial discrimination by law enforcement is wrong, and it’s against the law. In the 21st century, Black people must have the freedom to travel without worrying about being stopped because of the color of our skin.”

Read Tyler Perry’s op-ed in its entirety in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.