Systemic racism always takes a toll, whether it be by bullet or by blood clot. Clint Smith Read Quote
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. Clint Smith Read Quote
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. Clint Smith Read Quote
The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth. Clint Smith Read Quote
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. Clint Smith Read Quote
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. Clint Smith Read Quote
Sometimes a poem should just be about a girl jumping rope. It doesn’t have to be something that is imbued with more despair. Clint Smith Read Quote
Black artists deserve the opportunity to create work without the burden of alleviating the social ills plaguing many black communities. Clint Smith Read Quote
Schools are the single largest lever of mobility in this country. When we commit to creating and enforcing laws that acknowledge the injustice of the past, we open up the possibility of using schools as a means of reducing inequality. Clint Smith Read Quote
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. Clint Smith Read Quote
