Clint Smith Quotes

No, I don't believe it's prejudice. I truly believe they [Blacks] may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager or perhaps a general manager.

… a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through

After two years at UCLA, I decided to leave. I was convinced that no amount of education would help a black man get a job.

There is not racial or ethnic domination of hopelessness. It's everywhere.

America preaches integration and practices segregation.

Separate and unequal didn't work 100 years ago. It will not work today.

I learned early that I had to work harder than the white kids and harder than the boys.

Startling, and alarming to many, is the conclusion that follows from these data that if all people were treated the same, most average race differences would not disappear.

I'm not trying to say that it never hurt or that I never felt its sting, but I can honestly say that I never blamed anybody for racism. I have considered it more of a manifestation of humanity's problem rather than my personal problem.

I’ve always operated on the theory that I’d better be better and cleaner than my white counterparts.

Opportunity seems to be color-coded here in America

If this country is a melting pot, then either the Afro-American didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

We are still a nation deeply divided by race and class.

You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval of affirmative action.… We have to prove ourselves and we have to work hard doing it.

Black people are pledging their fealty to the state, and yet they aren't getting the same return. This is theft. It's systemized.

As long as you are in that white privilege bubble, you don't need to see the world differently. You don't need to see the world through the eyes of minorities or women.

I know what it's like to be denied opportunity based on the nature of your skin.

God blessed us with all this money, so why not take the money and put it into my brother's case? Talk about social and racial injustice in our country, and mass incarceration in our country?

My first reaction to Trump being elected was a visceral one. I cried for black people in general but, more particularly, for those of us at the margins who have been struggling and who have never received enough support.

My mother had two unshakable beliefs that she tried to drill into me. The first was that I had to study and work twice as hard as my white peers if I wanted to survive in America, and the second was that it was delusional and dangerous to believe I possessed the same freedom white people had to pursue my dreams.

As a black man, you learn at an early age the police are not your friends.

While many Americans agree that 'the system is rigged' economically, few are aware of the ways in which racial inequality has been structured and embedded in our society. This is why candid, fact-based discussions about racial inequality are so desperately needed.

The same way I'm not afraid of calling out systemic discrimination, I'm also not afraid of calling out inequality and the fact that inequality is growing in society and that affects everybody, regardless of race.

I've always been the underdog, and I've always had to work much harder than the next person just to get a look. But I feel like that's Black people as a whole, to be honest with you. We have to do so much more and work so much harder to get certain kinds of looks within this industry.

Although racism does, of course, occur in individual acts, these acts are part of a larger system that we all participate in. The focus on individual incidences prevents the analysis that is necessary in order to challenge this larger system.