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" Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot. "
Clint Smith
Bullet
Blood
Whether
Related Quotes:
" 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
" 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
" One of the most significant factors contributing to the chasm of educational opportunity is the way that schools are funded. "
Clint Smith
Significant
Way
Opportunity
" 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. "
Clint Smith
Women
Indigenous People
Men
" Supporting black professional athletes was taken seriously in my home. "
Clint Smith
Black
Seriously
Home
" After high school, I earned a scholarship to play Division I soccer at a small school in North Carolina, but I didn't get much playing time, which forced me to determine who I was beyond the field, something I had previously never had to do. "
Clint Smith
High School
Small
Time
" 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. "
Clint Smith
Ocean
Parents
Skin
" So often, our sporting allegiances are shaped by family tradition, passed down like heirlooms. "
Clint Smith
Like
Tradition
Shaped
" 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. "
Clint Smith
Doing
People
Color
" 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
" 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
Us
" 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
" It is easy not to support the death penalty when there is doubt about the culpability of the person sitting in the chair; it is harder to sustain such principles when the crime of the accused is morally indefensible. "
Clint Smith
Doubt
Death Penalty
Support
" Until lawmakers can disentangle property taxes from public education, inequalities - perpetuated by the Supreme Court and Congress - will persist. "
Clint Smith
Supreme Court
Congress
Will
" In sixth grade, my status as a Boy Scout was not something I went out of my way to share. In fact, I spent most of my adolescence attempting to keep it a secret from those who might use it as a source of derision. The off-brown collared shirt and forest-green sash were not something I would have ever been caught wearing in front of my friends. "
Clint Smith
Scout
Way
Adolescence
" 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
" 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
" In an effort to create a culture within my classroom where students feel safe sharing the intimacies of their own silences, I have four core principles posted on the board that sits in the front of my class, which every student signs at the beginning of the year: read critically, write consciously, speak clearly, tell your truth. "
Clint Smith
Culture
Truth
Speak
" People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves. "
Clint Smith
People
Want
Believe
" 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
" 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
" If the only people we are able to extend empathy to are those who are like us, who come from the same country we do, or who share our faith, then we misunderstand what empathy is. "
Clint Smith
Country
Faith
Like
" Silence is the residue of fear. "
Clint Smith
Silence
Fear
" 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
" 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
Us
Society
Action
" 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. "
Clint Smith
Say
Matter
Fear
" Blackness remains the coat you can't take off. "
Clint Smith
You
Blackness
Off
" 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
" 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
" 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
Me
Life