QuoteProject
I want to live in a world where my son will not be presumed guilty the moment he is born, where a toy in his hand isn't mistaken for anything other than a toy.
Clint Smith
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote expresses a desire for a just world free from racial bias and preconceived notions about innocence.

Clint Smith's quote articulates a profound concern for the societal injustices that predispose certain groups, especially Black boys, to be viewed through a lens of guilt rather than innocence. The speaker yearns for a future where children, regardless of their background, can exist safely and without the weight of harmful stereotypes that criminalize their existence from birth. It highlights the need for systemic change to foster equality and understanding in society.

Themes

JusticeInnocenceSocietyRacismEqualityChildrenBias

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about social justice initiatives, I might quote this to emphasize the need for reform.

More from Clint Smith

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
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 our society, as people pass out of young adulthood, they tend to relate to themselves more in terms of what they are no longer than what they are now, and that's psychologically low-grade devastating.
Marianne WilliamsonRead
If the spiritual universe and the way to it were shown, No one would remain in this world for a single moment.
RumiRead
A purely mental life may be destructive if it leads us to substitute thought for life and ideas for actions. The activity proper to man is purely mental because man is not just a disembodied mind. Our destiny is to live out what we think, because unless we live what we know, we do not even know it. It is only by making our knowledge part of ourselves, through action, that we enter into the reality that is signified by our concepts.
Thomas MertonRead
You wake up white, and you think about certain things every day. You wake up black, and you think about certain things. You wake up Chinese, and you think certain things - but those things aren't major. What's major is that you are good at your craft.
Judith JamisonRead
I am God's vessel. But my greatest pain in life is that I will never be able to see myself perform live.
Kanye WestRead
You are not wood, you are not stones, but men.
William ShakespeareRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.