Wunderman Thompson Brazil Takes Aim at Racism in Wake of Coronavirus

Coronavirus will contaminate a large portion of the population, disrupt production chains and plunge economies into unprecedented chaos across the planet.

In Brazil, this gruesome outlook will be even greater among the black population that is massively at the base of the Brazilian social pyramid and is the target of murders or abandonment that lead to death: without access to basic sanitation, healthcare, housing and employment. This population is part of the majority group that's most vulnerable to the coronavirus and who already suffer a daily life of injustice and violence in the country.

Genocide is the word used to describe the extermination of people motivated by ethnic, national, racial, religious and socio-political differences. In Brazil, a black person is murdered every 23 minutes. 80% of users of the Unified Healthcare System (SUS) are black. Blacks fall victim to firearms 2.5 times more than white people.

These numbers are not coincidental, they are the result of the structural racism within the Brazilian Government and society, and demonstrate that the target of violent deaths in the country has a colour.

The Black Coalition for Rights believes that using a word as powerful and meaningful such as genocide to report new homicides of black people in Brazil can change the way the problem is addressed. For this reason, in partnership with Wunderman Thompson Brazil, it created the campaign called "Alvos do Genocídio" (Genocide Targets), whose main purpose is to reveal these alarming data in charts too powerful to be ignored. These numbers will be blatantly revealed in shooting targets, filled proportionally with the discrepancy in the percentage of murders of blacks and non-blacks in the country through static and digital OOHs in several Brazilian capitals (SP, RJ, ES, and BA), prints, content created and disseminated by influencers (stories and posts on Instagram and Facebook) and video content for YouTube on the International Day Against Racial Discrimination, March 21st.

“Wunderman Thompson Brazil was born with a strong legacy of institutional actions associated with racial equality. The high rate of violent deaths of blacks in Brazil and in the world is part of the issues we need to discuss. In addition, they need to be properly classified so that these large-scale deaths cease to be part of everyday life and fall into the abyss of normality. It is important to call the attention of the world, and our desire is to partner with agents of change, such as the Black Coalition for Rights,” says Keka Morelle, CCO at Wunderman Thompson Brazil.

In addition, “Alvos do Genocídio” will have the website www.alvosdogenocidio.org, which will contain all the charts and content created for the campaign and from where users can send a petition to the mainstream media in the country for them to refer to the deliberate, daily, systematic and mass murder of the black population using the correct term: GENOCIDE.

“The genocide that we claim and denounce does not occur only through direct deaths, visibly observed in homicide rates that disproportionately affect blacks, one every 23 minutes. Genocide also occurs by denying conditions, opportunities and access to public services, such as healthcare. If the coronavirus is as lethal as shown in the news and social isolation is a crucial means of protection, we cannot say it is natural that certain groups can isolate themselves, while others cannot. Bus, train and subway terminals are still packed. Wage workers, informal workers and the unemployed will not be able to put themselves in a different routine from that which guarantees scarce resources for their livelihood. The risk faced by black communities of falling victims to the coronavirus, and the number of deaths it should produce in poor communities across the country, we call GENOCIDE,” says Douglas Belchior, Member of the Black Coalition for Rights.