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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
If our principles are only our principles when it is convenient for us, when they align with our visceral emotional responses, then they are,… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
In sixth grade, my status as a Boy Scout was not something I went out of my way to share. In fact, I spent… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
The history of racial violence in our country is both omnipresent and unspoken. It is a smog that surrounds us that few will admit… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
If you carry a gun, people will call you paranoid. That's ridiculous. If I have a gun, what in the hell do I have… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot. — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
Education is a human right - a recognition of dignity that each person should be afforded. — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
Preparing oneself for the possibility of confronting racism triggers something that slowly chips away at physical and emotional well-being. — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
