Courageous Conversation Global Foundation (CCGF) aims to address racial disparities through safe, authentic and effective cross-racial dialogue, including unconscious-bias training. It became clear where we needed to spark a conversion next when on January 6, 2021, a crowd of 20,000 people stormed the United States Capitol. Most of them were White Americans. And so far, only 684 have been charged. Compare that to the 14,000 arrested in 2020 at Black Lives Matter protests, the vast majority of which were peaceful protests. This left most Americans asking … What if they were Black?

“What If They Were Black?” shined a light on the bias we witnessed that day through a limited collection of iconic airbrush-style memorial shirts, the kind worn in the Black community during mourning. These memorial shirts highlighted the egregious difference in the repercussions that would have been suffered if the insurrectionists were Black by visually reimagining those insurrectionists as Black people—including the self-proclaimed “shaman,” the man in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office with his feet on her desk, and the man proudly carrying the speaker’s podium. The backs of each shirt got to the root of racial inequality with statistics that highlighted bias within the justice system. Instead of just talking about the day, we aimed to start a conversation about the systemic bias we witnessed by laying out the stats to support this statement: if the insurrectionists were Black, they’d be dead.

Racial double standards pervade our society. If a Black person does the same things as a White person, a Black person elicits much harsher reactions, as was vividly exemplified in how Black Americans were treated during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests compared with how White Americans were treated during the January 6 Capitol attack.

We were driven by one deeply troubling stat: Black people, even when unarmed, are 3X more likely to be killed by police. This stat pushed us to expose the persistent double standard held against Black Americans and bring America’s biases to the surface.

We targeted a group called the “persuadables,” those who have been ambivalent on issues related to race but who can still be engaged in a critical conversation. To engage them we showed up only in places where a two-way conversation could be facilitated, whether that was on social or in real life.

This campaign shined a light on the bias of that day through a limited collection of iconic airbrush-style “Rest in Peace” T-shirts. In the Black community, wearing these T-shirts is often how deceased loved ones are mourned and revered.

These “Rest in Peace” T-shirts highlighted the egregious difference in the repercussions that would have been suffered if the insurrectionists were Black by visually reimagining a handful of notable insurrectionists as Black people. The backs of each shirt got to the root of racial inequality with statistics that highlighted bias within the justice system.

The shirts debuted via a catalog-style Instagram campaign that featured them being worn around the Capitol and Washington, DC. On the Instagram page, people were able to click through to purchase the shirts, with the proceeds going to CCGF to help achieve racial equity and social justice. The campaign spanned across social platforms—Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter.