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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. "

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" To be clear, affirmative action is not, by itself, an adequate response to decades of systemic looting, but it has been an indispensible tool in inching us towards some semblance of a more equitable society. "

Clint Smith

Society

Action

" Abolition seemed a fantasy when Frederick Douglass called for all slaves to be released. "

" Sometimes sports serves as a reprieve from politics, and sometimes it serves as an extension of it. "

" When the power of private prisons is diminished, so, too, is their ability to engage in back-door political lobbying that has an impact on public and private prisons alike. "

" The presidents and the founding fathers and all of the people we sort of raise up as false idols, we don't wrestle with the fact that many of these were brilliant men, but they were also men with deep prejudices against people of color, against indigenous people, against women. "

" As we walked through the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I pushed my grandfather in a wheelchair he had reluctantly agreed to sit in. He is a proud man who also knows that his knees aren't what they once were - that years of high school and college football had long accelerated the deterioration of his aging joints. "

" People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves. "

" A cage that allows someone to walk around inside of it is still a cage. "

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

Clint Smith

Time

Over

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

" Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot. "

" When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don't forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life. "

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

" The U.S. prison system, over all, disproportionately affects black and brown people, but people of color are overrepresented to a greater degree in private prisons. "

" 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. "

" The death penalty not only takes away the life of the person strapped to the table - it takes away a little bit of the humanity in each of us. "

Clint Smith

Death

Death Penalty

" My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is. "

Clint Smith

Opportunities

Life

" The benefits of prison education go beyond lowering recidivism rates and increasing post-release employment. It can also rekindle a sense of purpose and confidence. "

" 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

Empathy

" To operate with the aspiration of color-blindness in a country whose central operating mechanism for centuries has been race belies the logic of race-neutral public policy. Public policy must account for the historic and intentional pillaging of resources experienced by black Americans. "

" My childhood closet was ornamented with U.S. jerseys of World Cups spanning the nineties and two-thousands - some of my favorite memories are from summers when, with a ball under my foot and a jersey on my back, I watched the U.S. team go up against the world's best players in the largest sporting event on Earth. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" To be an Arsenal fan is to convince yourself that you can no longer support a team that disappoints you, only to be drawn back in by the ever-flickering promise of something better. "

" 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. "

" Education is a human right - a recognition of dignity that each person should be afforded. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 'A Talk to Teachers' is emblematic of Baldwin's proclivity for candor over political appeasement and, like much of his work, focusses on history and the American consciousness. "