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" 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

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

" Silence is the residue of fear. "

Clint Smith

Silence

Fear

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

" Those who support the death penalty are accepting a practice that is both ineffective and fundamentally flawed. "

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

" 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

" 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. "

" We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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

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

" I've been writing poetry seriously since about 2008, 2009. "

" 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. "

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" 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

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

" '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. "

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

" The social science on the impact of desegregation is clear. Researchers have consistently found that students in integrated schools - irrespective of ethnicity, race, or social class - are more likely to make academic gains in mathematics, reading, and often science than they are in segregated ones. "

" Do those serving life sentences deserve access to educational opportunities never having a future beyond bars? The answer is yes and necessitates that in-prison education serves additional goals beyond reducing recidivism. "

" So often, our sporting allegiances are shaped by family tradition, passed down like heirlooms. "

Clint Smith

Tradition

Shaped

" When the U.S. team went on its historic run to the World Cup quarter-finals in 2002, I was thirteen years old. Each game in that run - the astonishing victory against Portugal, the resilient win over Mexico, even the gutsy but unlucky effort against the Germans - propelled me to push my other athletic interests aside and focus only on soccer. "

" There is simply no better way to generate buzz for soccer in your country than having your team in the World Cup. "