Bed-Stuy Ads Recommend Black People “Stop Being Black”
An anonymous group, RISE, is placing ads in bus shelters around Bed-Stuy to remind people that “Racism Still Exists,” the blog Color Lines reports. In a bus shelter on the corner of Nostrand and Halsey, for example, an ad says, “Don’t Want to Get Stopped by the NYPD? STOP BEING BLACK,” and then includes a series of statistics about the racial disparities in the execution of Stop and Frisk. The poster is RISE’s sixth; on the group’s Tumblr—which, like the ads, has no contact information—there are graphics about wealth disparity, smoking, fast food, education and more.
Many in the community appreciate the ads. A local organizer, speaking of the gentrification in Bed-Stuy, told the blog “for many of the young yuppies and buppies, they see the police playing a positive role and trying to engage in a race neutral dialouge… What the billboard is doing is kinda opening up and exploding this myth that [stop-and-frisk] is taking place in a race neutral light—it’s making people confront it in a very real way.”
Click through to see more of RISE’s ads, some of whose arguments are a bit more controversial. [photo]
