Clint Smith How to Raise a Black Son in America https://www.ted.com/talks/clint_smith_how_to_raise_a_black_son_in_america/transcript#t-293302 Clint’s intriguing opening evaluates his own childhood, and how it was uniquely shaped by the environment around him, and by others prejudice. “Their parenting always sought to reconcile the tension between having my siblings and I understand the realities of the world, while ensuring that we never accepted the status quo as inevitable,” Clint says, addressing his parents and childhood. Rules and foundations received in childhood serve as an early form of education that not only shapes the individual, but also acts as a tool of critical thinking and comprehension of the world, and their place in it. Parenting is distinctly shaped by the realities of the world, particularly its ugliness, especially in the african american community, where, in early childhood, not being educated to the realities of the environment around you and your own situation can quite literally cost you your life. Black kids have to grow up quickly, wise up fast, or else they’re fish in a barrel, blinded prey unknowingly stepping into the territory of a predator. White kids and black kids are not raised the same because they are not treated the same by their peers, are not seen or labeled in the same way by society. “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 says. White children are raised to grow to be good people and try their best even as they fail; black children are raised not to be perceived as criminal and killed in the street. Black children can never be children if the joint word black is embolden, synonymous with danger, evocative of fear; prejudice ultimately steals away childhoods. However fear cannot define the existence of african americans, just as others prejudice cannot shape the realities of who we are, or our experiences; we must find the value, depth, and love within our lives even if others cannot. Clint closes with this line; “So when we say that black lives matter, it's not because others don't, it's simply because we must affirm that we are worthy of existing without fear, when so many things tell us we are not.” Though his speech clearly highlights a reality in which the american is not achievable within, it also filled with hope, and faith in a world in which it can be, emphasizing the the dream, while intangible, is one of belief, one that, even if never achieved, is always striven for. This is what I liked most about his speech; though he spoke of bleak realities with such passion and such pain, through his own heartbreak, Clint was still able to see hope, to see a vision of the future in which all of our realities are beautiful, are fair, and all of our children can dream. His experience specifies what vaguely referred to in class texts, a direct addressing of the of racial inequality in america in all aspects, with a full range of emotions. If anything, I take that faith and perseverance away, that vision of a beautiful world, even if that dream feels hopeless at times; even if heaven is too far from us, and that paradise we seek is just a mirage, we still chase it, not in blindness, not in foolishness, but in hope.