You’ve Likely Heard Some Statistics About African-American Men and Boys—But These?

The statistics are all over the media, and they usually paint a pretty dismal picture for African-American men and boys.

But these? Wow.

This ad, entitled “Statistic,” is the brainchild of Jack McGoldrick. He’s a Medford, Massachusetts-based marketing executive, and the idea came to him while working in New York. He saw statistics from the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services while doing research for an antidrug campaign.

Those numbers stuck with him, and eventually led to this video—after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, and Eric Garner in New York, and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, and the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag began to get a massive amount of attention.

Shaking the worldview of people who assume that African-American teenagers are destined for a hard life is a really effective way to counter some of that spin.

As Max Tilus, a 17-year-old senior who is in the video, stated:

“It seems like there’s always been a negative light on the black race: ‘They’re the ones doing the drugs. They’re the ones doing the crime.’”

Watch:

This video was made by the Medford, Massachusetts, chapter of the NAACP, and features the hashtag #IAmAStatistic.

Some information gathered from The Boston Globe.