Photography, sculpture, and painting were wielded as cultural weapons over the course of generations to substantiate the idea that black people were inherently subordinate beings; they were used to make slavery acceptable and to make black subjugation more palatable. Clint Smith Read Quote
With ‘Black Panther,’ black artists were provided with the opportunity and agency to create art that captures the full range of their imaginative possibilities. It matters that Chadwick Boseman is the protagonist and is supported by a cast of nearly all black characters. Clint Smith Read Quote
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. Clint Smith Read Quote
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. Clint Smith Read Quote
We tend to think of racism as this interpersonal verbal or physical abuse, when in truth, that is only one way that racism manifests itself. The reality of contemporary racism is that it while it is ubiquitous, it is often invisible, subsequently making it more difficult to name and identify. Clint Smith Read Quote
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 Read Quote
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. Clint Smith Read Quote
Sometimes sports serves as a reprieve from politics, and sometimes it serves as an extension of it. Clint Smith Read Quote
Preparing oneself for the possibility of confronting racism triggers something that slowly chips away at physical and emotional well-being. Clint Smith Read Quote
