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" Being incarcerated does not mean being devoid of the capacity to learn, grow, and think, and it's critical that prisons provide spaces where learning can be both cultivated and encouraged. "

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" Living under the perpetual and pervasive threat of racism seems, for black men and black women, to quite literally reduce lifespans. "

Clint Smith

Women

Living

Men

" I'm not sure that there are days of my life when I'm not confronted with racism. For some, that may seem hyperbolic, but it's true. "

" Black artists deserve the opportunity to create work without the burden of alleviating the social ills plaguing many black communities. "

" When we say that black lives matter, it's not because others don't: it's simply because we must affirm that we are worthy of existing without fear, when so many things tell us we are not. "

" In high school, I made the all-city and all-state soccer teams. "

" 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. "

" In my home, guns were not something to be earned or celebrated. Water guns and Nerf guns were not allowed outside. B.B. guns were not even a part of the conversation. "

" 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. "

" Who has to have a soapbox when all you've ever needed is your voice? "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Silence is the residue of fear. "

Clint Smith

Silence

Fear

" We inculcate young people with the message that if they don't succeed, it is merely of their own doing. They should have worked harder, we say. They should have made better decisions. This message is especially present in communities of color. "

" This idea of shared humanity and the connections that we make with one another - that's what, in fact, makes life worth living. "

" My parents raised me and my siblings in an armor of advice, an ocean of alarm bells so someone wouldn't steal the breath from our lungs, so that they wouldn't make a memory of this skin. "

" 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. "

" If you only hear one side of the story, at some point, you have to question who the writer is. "

" 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. "

" Supporting black professional athletes was taken seriously in my home. "

" Blackness remains the coat you can't take off. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Photography, sculpture, and painting were wielded as cultural weapons over the course of generations to substantiate the idea that black people were inherently subordinate beings; they were used to make slavery acceptable and to make black subjugation more palatable. "

" School desegregation is associated with higher graduation rates, greater employability, higher earnings, and decreased rates of incarceration. "

" 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. "

" I've been a follower of Arsenal Football Club since I was ten years old. "

" We tend to think of racism as this interpersonal verbal or physical abuse, when in truth, that is only one way that racism manifests itself. The reality of contemporary racism is that it while it is ubiquitous, it is often invisible, subsequently making it more difficult to name and identify. "

" New Orleans taught me that mourning takes many different forms. Where I'm from, mourning is spirited. It is loud. "

" One of the most significant factors contributing to the chasm of educational opportunity is the way that schools are funded. "

" Older prisoners are more expensive for prisons to house because they tend to require more health care over time. "

Clint Smith

Time

Over