John Legend releases a new thought provoking music video for the song “Surefire” that shows a tragic love story of a man and a woman that fight racial stigmas and cultural differences and overcome it all with the love that they share for each other.
Directed by Cole Wiley, this video comes just in time to address some of the issues involving keeping immigrants out of the United States and some of the increased racial tensions that has come along with our new president Donald Trump.
“Sunfire” attempts to show that through love, we can put away the cultural and racial differences that we may have and come together for something beautiful.
The video begins with an innocent young couple, Roberto and Jamila, who are madly in love. With Jamila wearing a hijab and Roberto of Mexican decent, they were faced with prejudices represented by an outraged woman who screamed at them and ripped the hijab of the girlfriend’s head.
Their families also didn’t agree with the two being together, especially Jamila’s father. He constantly shooed him away and one night they even got into a scuffle where Roberto angrily held a bat at the father. After the violent encounter, Jamila was forbidden to see or be with Roberto. Jamila would pack up her things and sneak out at night to spend time with the love of her life, but with her father fed up with the relationship, he called Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to take Roberto away.
After Roberto was ripped away from his home, Jamila realized she didn’t want to live without Roberto. She ran away from her home to Mexico and found Roberto, where they embraced and stared into each other’s eyes. The video ends with the two families coming together to try and understand each other and to live in peace.
Wiley spoke on the significance of this video on today’s society.
“Human civilization is experiencing an extraordinary moment in time. We are more capable of doing more good than ever before, but we are still mired by a myriad of systemic failures that continue to arise because of our continuing lack of empathy towards others, ” Wiley said. “That is why Jamila and Roberto, the star-crossed lovers featured in the Surefire music video, face a number of obstacles that are heavily rooted in the current state of America.”
See the full video below.
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