Carolina QuotesI simply cannot imagine having access to that much wealth (a billion dollars is one thousand stacks of a million dollars!) and thinking that using a minuscule percentage of that money to make sure other people have access to food, homes, and education was a bad thing.
Clint Smith Connected to the Carolinas
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Nov 6, 2019 on Twitter
- year
- 2019
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“I simply cannot imagine having access to that much wealth (a…” Clint Smith. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-4427E1B050. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/4427e1b050
More from Clint Smith
I've said this before, but for all the people who believe you definitely would have been abolitionists in the era of slavery, who you are today is who you would have been then. You don't need to imagine scenarios of living in the 19th century, there's work to do here and now.
And the thing is that names and symbols and holidays, like, aren’t just names and symbols and symbolism. What they are are reflective of the stories that people tell. And those stories shape the narratives that societies carry. And those narratives shape public policy. And public policy, that shapes the material conditions of people’s lives. Which is not to say that taking down a statue of Robert E. Lee or making Juneteenth a holiday is going to erase the racial wealth gap. Of course not. But what it is is part of an ecosystem of narratives and stories and ideas that can help us recalibrate our understanding of why certain communities look the way that they do and what needs to be done and invested in those communities to create a new set of opportunities. So, we should recognize and celebrate that Juneteenth is a holiday, and we should also recognize that that is not enough — it is not nearly enough — and that it is one part of a much longer struggle and a much larger struggle to make sure that we are creating a more equitable and just world.
Worth repeating that all of the police violence you see happening right now has been happening for a long time before there were any camera phones to record it. It's a daily phenomenon in communities across the country. It's structurally embedded into how these forces operate.