This outdoor campaign was certainly not created at the spur of the moment; it was a well planned and executed one. Given the increasing amount of fatal shootings of young black men across the U.S, the New York office of international creative shop Fred & Farid teamed up with humanist organization The New York Society for Ethical Culture on the occasion of the Black History Month redesigned the classic black human-silhouette shooting target, thereby illustrating the fact that black men are far more likely than their peers to be killed by “trained shooters.”
The issue of black men shooting is a contentious topic even in a political climate that provides new opportunities for outrage every day. So, this ad agency chose to address the seemingly insoluble problem of gun violence in lots of different ways, but few have directly tackled the racial components of this epidemic.
Using the tagline “More paint. Less hate,” the project included both an outdoor display of artists’ variations on the classic target and an exhibit at the Richard Taittinger Gallery in Manhattan.
Several hundred viewers have used the campaign site to create their own takes and sign a related Change.org petition calling on the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors to update its practices to reflect the findings of this study by heightening officers’ sensitivity to unconscious bias in potentially fatal scenarios.
