Abolition seemed a fantasy when Frederick Douglass called for all slaves to be released. — Clint Smith Abolition Copy Share Image
“do you know what it means for your existence to be defined by someone else’s intentions?” — Clint Smith Existence Copy Share Image
A cage that allows someone to walk around inside of it is still a cage. — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
So often, our sporting allegiances are shaped by family tradition, passed down like heirlooms. — Clint Smith Culture Copy Share Image
There is simply no better way to generate buzz for soccer in your country than having your team in the World Cup. — Clint Smith Better way Copy Share Image
Supporting black professional athletes was taken seriously in my home. — Clint Smith Athletes Copy Share Image
The most important and brave thing someone can do, I think, in the face of dehumanization, is to continue to assert their… — Clint Smith Brave Copy Share Image
Make your attacker advance through a wall of bullets. I may get killed with my own gun, but he's gonna have to… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
Black artists deserve the opportunity to create work without the burden of alleviating the social ills plaguing many black communities. — Clint Smith Art Copy Share Image
In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so… — Clint Smith Dance Copy Share Image
To be an Arsenal fan is to convince yourself that you can no longer support a team that disappoints you, only to… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
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… — 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… — Clint Smith Ability Copy Share Image
I'm not sure that there are days of my life when I'm not confronted with racism. For some, that may seem hyperbolic,… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
When the U.S. team went on its historic run to the World Cup quarter-finals in 2002, I was thirteen years old. Each… — Clint Smith Effort 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… — Clint Smith Action Copy Share Image
Schools are the single largest lever of mobility in this country. When we commit to creating and enforcing laws that acknowledge the… — Clint Smith Country Copy Share Image
To operate with the aspiration of color-blindness in a country whose central operating mechanism for centuries has been race belies the logic… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
Each holiday season, as family members arrive and couches are unfolded, my household settles into a palpable nostalgia. Poorly designed photo albums… — Clint Smith Brotherhood Copy Share Image
The sling is to a rifle what the holster is to a pistol. If you have a sling, chances are you will… — Clint Smith Amendment Copy Share Image
The social science on the impact of desegregation is clear. Researchers have consistently found that students in integrated schools - irrespective of… — Clint Smith Desegregation Copy Share Image
The presidents and the founding fathers and all of the people we sort of raise up as false idols, we don't wrestle… — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
The two most important rules in a gunfight are: always cheat and always win. — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves. — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
New Orleans taught me that mourning takes many different forms. Where I'm from, mourning is spirited. It is loud. — Clint Smith Grief Copy Share Image
If you only hear one side of the story, at some point, you have to question who the writer is. — Clint Smith Copy Share Image
Until lawmakers can disentangle property taxes from public education, inequalities - perpetuated by the Supreme Court and Congress - will persist. — Clint Smith Court Copy Share Image
We spend so much time listening to the things people are saying that we rarely pay attention to the things they don't. — Clint Smith Attention Copy Share Image
Empathy should not be contingent on our proximity to suffering or the likelihood of it happening to us. Rather, it should stem… — Clint Smith Disdain Copy Share Image
My parents raised me and my siblings in an armor of advice, an ocean of alarm bells so someone wouldn't steal the… — Clint Smith Advice Copy Share Image
To be clear, affirmative action is not, by itself, an adequate response to decades of systemic looting, but it has been an… — Clint Smith Action 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… — Clint Smith Country 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… — 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… — Clint Smith America Copy Share Image
This idea of shared humanity and the connections that we make with one another - that's what, in fact, makes life worth… — Clint Smith Connections 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… — Clint Smith Emotional Copy Share Image
'A Talk to Teachers' showed me that a teacher's work should reject the false pretense of being apolitical and, instead, confront the… — Clint Smith Education Copy Share Image
