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.
Clint SmithRead
The moral abhorrence of private prisons has been brought to our attention by courageous acts of investigative journalism, illuminating scholarship, and the work of activists who have decried the social stratification brought about by our prison systems.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the ethical concerns surrounding private prisons and the vital role of journalism and activism in exposing these issues.
Clint Smith's quote emphasizes the moral outrage associated with private prisons and the societal inequalities perpetuated by the prison system. It recognizes the critical contributions of investigative journalism and activism in shedding light on these injustices, advocating for awareness and change in how society views and manages incarceration.
Themes
Private PrisonsJusticeActivismInvestigative JournalismSocial Stratification
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech on criminal justice reform, I shared Clint Smith's quote to highlight the importance of transparency in the prison system.
More from Clint Smith
All quotes →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.
Clint SmithRead
One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see something in the world that he might not have seen before.
Clint SmithRead
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.
Clint SmithRead
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 SmithRead
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.
Clint SmithRead
Similar quotes
In countries with a properly functioning legal system, the mob continues to exist, but it is rarely called upon to mete out capital punishment. The right to take human life belongs to the state. Not so in societies where weak courts and poor law enforcement are combined with intractable structural injustices.
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Charity is no substitute for justice. If we never challenge a social order that allows some to accumulate wealth--even if they decide to help the less fortunate--while others are short-changed, then even acts of kindness end up supporting unjust arrangements. We must never ignore the injustices that make charity necessary, or the inequalities that make it possible.
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Because the Illinois death penalty system is arbitrary and capricious - and therefore immoral - I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.
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Because we always are feeling for justice for all that the reality is, unfortunately, the justice system is skewed, and often people of color do not receive appropriate justice in this country.
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Industrialised countries must take the responsibility of helping poorer countries in the climate change action plan.
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Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.
Martin Luther King, Jr.Read