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
Growing up in New Orleans, I was always the only black kid, or one of two, on the school soccer team. While I was always conscious of this status, what took precedent was my unfettered love of the game.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the struggle of growing up as a minority while emphasizing the importance of passion over societal challenges.
Clint Smith's quote captures the experience of growing up in a racially diverse yet unequal environment, highlighting how his love for soccer transcended the barriers of being one of the few black kids on his team. This illustrates the power of passion and personal identity amidst societal pressures, showing that one's interests and loves can prevail over adversity and isolation.
Themes
SoccerIdentityPassionMinorityNew OrleansAdversity
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about overcoming obstacles in sports, this quote reflects the power of passion in pursuing one's interests.
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
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