Clint Smith

While the most disadvantaged students - most often poor students of color - receive the most considerable academic benefits from attending diverse schools, research demonstrates that young people in general, regardless of their background, experience profound benefits from attending integrated schools.

As we walked through the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I pushed my grandfather in a wheelchair he had reluctantly agreed to sit in. He is a proud man who also knows that his knees aren't what they once were - that years of high school and college football had long accelerated the deterioration of his aging joints.

My poetry is me trying to reconcile my own life and opportunities I've had with opportunities my students aren't given and how profoundly unfair that is.

When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don't forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life.

The benefits of prison education go beyond lowering recidivism rates and increasing post-release employment. It can also rekindle a sense of purpose and confidence.

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.

Living under the perpetual and pervasive threat of racism seems, for black men and black women, to quite literally reduce lifespans.

This idea of shared humanity and the connections that we make with one another - that's what, in fact, makes life worth living.

There is a solidarity that black people can find in celebrating the athletic success of our own, especially in sports where our existence is sparse.

Until affirmative action is described and understood as one mechanism by which to make amends for historical wrongdoing against members of marginalized communities, it will fail to meaningfully address the inequality that exists as a direct result of federal policy.

Advocating for affirmative action through the prism of diversity may be more politically palatable, but it will inevitably yield insufficient results.

To be clear, affirmative action is not, by itself, an adequate response to decades of systemic looting, but it has been an indispensible tool in inching us towards some semblance of a more equitable society.