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" Abolition seemed a fantasy when Frederick Douglass called for all slaves to be released. "
Clint Smith
Fantasy
Abolition
Slaves
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" I want to live in a world where my son will not be presumed guilty the moment he is born, where a toy in his hand isn't mistaken for anything other than a toy. "
Clint Smith
Son
Moment
World
" The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth. "
Clint Smith
Literature
Lie
Truth
" The moral abhorrence of private prisons has been brought to our attention by courageous acts of investigative journalism, illuminating scholarship, and the work of activists who have decried the social stratification brought about by our prison systems. "
Clint Smith
Moral
Work
Prisons
" Growing up in New Orleans, I was always the only black kid, or one of two, on the school soccer team. While I was always conscious of this status, what took precedent was my unfettered love of the game. "
Clint Smith
School
Team
Love
" While the most disadvantaged students - most often poor students of color - receive the most considerable academic benefits from attending diverse schools, research demonstrates that young people in general, regardless of their background, experience profound benefits from attending integrated schools. "
Clint Smith
Experience
People
Research
" There is a solidarity that black people can find in celebrating the athletic success of our own, especially in sports where our existence is sparse. "
Clint Smith
Black
Find
People
" Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it will fail to meaningfully address the inequality that exists as a direct result of federal policy. "
Clint Smith
Inequality
Action
Policy
" One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see something in the world that he might not have seen before. "
Clint Smith
See
Career
Engineering
" So often, our sporting allegiances are shaped by family tradition, passed down like heirlooms. "
Clint Smith
Like
Tradition
Shaped
" Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem from a disdain that suffering is happening at all. "
Clint Smith
Suffering
Us
Empathy
" The most important and brave thing someone can do, I think, in the face of dehumanization, is to continue to assert their humanity. "
Clint Smith
Humanity
Important
Think
" Schools shouldn't have to choose between serving a student with special needs or cutting an art class, laying off teachers or using outdated textbooks. But these are the positions that far too many schools have been placed in, and only a meaningful acknowledgment of the problem can begin the process of getting them out. "
Clint Smith
Teachers
Process
Problem
" While violence is part of what it means to be part of the black diaspora in the United States, that is not all it means to be black. "
Clint Smith
Black
United States
Violence
" When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don't forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life. "
Clint Smith
Freedom
Forget
Country
" Young people are constantly absorbing - through media, textbooks, and policy - the myths of American exceptionalism; for black children, this means that what they are taught in class does not match the world that they navigate daily. "
Clint Smith
Children
People
World
" In high school, I made the all-city and all-state soccer teams. "
Clint Smith
School
Soccer
Made
" Each holiday season, as family members arrive and couches are unfolded, my household settles into a palpable nostalgia. Poorly designed photo albums are pulled from the shelves. Home videos of prepubescent siblings in matching pajamas dance across the television screen. "
Clint Smith
Dance
Family
Holiday
" Black artists deserve the opportunity to create work without the burden of alleviating the social ills plaguing many black communities. "
Clint Smith
Create
Black
Burden
" I've been a follower of Arsenal Football Club since I was ten years old. "
Clint Smith
Club
Follower
Football
" Silence is the residue of fear. "
Clint Smith
Silence
Fear
" Who has to have a soapbox when all you've ever needed is your voice? "
Clint Smith
Your
Ever
Needed
" 'A Talk to Teachers' showed me that a teacher's work should reject the false pretense of being apolitical and, instead, confront the problems that shape our students' lives. "
Clint Smith
Teacher
Me
Work
" Preparing oneself for the possibility of confronting racism triggers something that slowly chips away at physical and emotional well-being. "
Clint Smith
Racism
Well-Being
Away
" Our entire lives, we're inundated with media and messaging that tells us that to be incarcerated is to be criminal and to be criminal is to be a bad person. "
Clint Smith
Our
Person
Us
" America's economy cannot be disentangled from the free labor that built it, just as America's culture cannot be unbound from the black artists who cultivated it. "
Clint Smith
America
Culture
Black
" I kind of follow in the tradition of some folks - some thinkers and scholars I really look up - who reject the idea of intellectual compartmentalization. "
Clint Smith
Look
Kind
Tradition
" The history of racial violence in our country is both omnipresent and unspoken. It is a smog that surrounds us that few will admit is there. "
Clint Smith
History
Admit
Country
" We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't. "
Clint Smith
People
Time
Saying
" It's incredibly important to understand history... when it comes to inequality. "
Clint Smith
Inequality
History
Important
" If our principles are only our principles when it is convenient for us, when they align with our visceral emotional responses, then they are, in fact, not principles at all. "
Clint Smith
Emotional
Fact
Only