Clint Smith's How To Raise A Black Son In America

Clint Smith is a teacher, writer, and doctoral candidate in Education at Harvard University with a concentration in Culture, Institutions, and Society. His TED Talks, How to Raise a Black Son in America along with another TED Talks, collectively have been viewed more than 4 millions times. The writer and educator draws on his and his students’ lives to create poetry that blends art and activism. Smith successfully delivers his presentation by gaining the audience’s attention and speaking on personal experiences. He wanted the audience to know that it was not easy for his parents to raise him in a black son in America. He wanted his audience to be “deeply unsettled by, the realities that many in the black community face everyday.”

Timing …show more content…
The officer mistook Rice’s pellet gun for a real gun. Smith stated, “I WROTE THIS AFTER TAMIR RICE WAS KILLED, AND AFTER REFLECTING ON HOW HARD IT MUST HAVE BEEN FOR MY PARENTS, FOR BLACK PARENTS EVERYWHERE, TO HAVE TO TEACH THEIR CHILDREN TO NAVIGATE A WORLD THAT IS SO OFTEN TAUGHT TO FEAR THEM. I CAN NEVER THANK THEM ENOUGH FOR DOING EVERYTHING IN THEIR POWER TO PROTECT ME AND MY SIBLINGS, TO KEEP US SAFE IN AN UNSAFE WORLD. I HOPE WE’RE ON OUR WAY TO SOMETHING BETTER. THANK YOU TED FOR POSTING.” In Smith’s speech he successfully addresses how society strips the innocence of our African American children. He tells his audience of an account where he, who was 12 years old at the time, and his friends bought Super Soakers on an overnight field trip to another city. They hid behind cars and ran through the darkness that lay between streetlights as if they were someone …show more content…
His words punched with power while his hand gestures were a plus. Smith dominated the stage by only standing in one spot. Because he made eye contact with the the audience the entire time and made facial expressions that made you want to listen, moving around was not necessary. He articulated each and every word, so that his audience could hear and feel what he wanted to get through to them. He made you believe that he was that black child that struggled for innocence in a time as such. He made you feel the fear his father felt when his son was so naive to the fact that he couldn’t do the same things as the white children. Rice, the 12-year-old boy mentioned earlier, was doing exactly what Clint Smith’s parents cautioned him about. Rice was only having fun, enjoying himself and being a normal child, but black; and so was