Clint Smith Quotes
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The beauty of the World Cup is that while thirty-two countries get to cheer for their respective teams, the event also affirms a global pluralism - it is as much a festival of cultural multiplicity as it is a competition featuring some of the best athletes in the world.
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I think about the history of racism in this country all the time.
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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.
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The death penalty not only takes away the life of the person strapped to the table - it takes away a little bit of the humanity in each of us.
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So often, our sporting allegiances are shaped by family tradition, passed down like heirlooms.
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In my home, guns were not something to be earned or celebrated. Water guns and Nerf guns were not allowed outside. B.B. guns were not even a part of the conversation.
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People create the sort of myths they want to believe about themselves.
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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.
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A cage that allows someone to walk around inside of it is still a cage.
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To be an Arsenal fan is to convince yourself that you can no longer support a team that disappoints you, only to be drawn back in by the ever-flickering promise of something better.
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In high school, I made the all-city and all-state soccer teams.
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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.
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History has proven that art depicting black people cannot be disentangled from the political implications that such art has on their lives. As Africans were being stripped from the continent and sailed across the Atlantic to the Western world, depictions of black people in Western art changed in order to further render them racialized caricatures.
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Oppression doesn't disappear just because you decided not to teach us that chapter.
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It's incredibly important to understand history... when it comes to inequality.
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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.
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Who has to have a soapbox when all you've ever needed is your voice?
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'A Talk to Teachers' is emblematic of Baldwin's proclivity for candor over political appeasement and, like much of his work, focusses on history and the American consciousness.
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Supporting black professional athletes was taken seriously in my home.
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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 prisons.
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When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don't forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life.
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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.
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I'm not sure that there are days of my life when I'm not confronted with racism. For some, that may seem hyperbolic, but it's true.
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Preparing oneself for the possibility of confronting racism triggers something that slowly chips away at physical and emotional well-being.