Quotes from Clint Smith

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.

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.

If you only hear one side of the story, at some point, you have to question who the writer is.

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.

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

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

Silence is the residue of fear.

It's incredibly important to understand history... when it comes to inequality.

Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it will fail to meaningfully address the inequality that exists as a direct result of federal policy.

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.

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

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.

Advocating for affirmative action through the prism of diversity may be more politically palatable, but it will inevitably yield insufficient results.

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 cultivated it.

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

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.

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.

There is a solidarity that black people can find in celebrating the athletic success of our own, especially in sports where our existence is sparse.

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.

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.

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.

In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance.

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

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