Clint Smith delivered an extremely powerful and persuasive speech on race dynamics and the values that were instilled into him throughout his childhood. My immediate thought after listening to his entire talk for the first time was that it was an excellent combination of two speaking styles: a traditional TED talk and slam poetry.
From this speech, I found two key components I’d like to discuss: his introduction, and how he used emphasis. Watch the speech then review my commentary! Have some thoughts? Comment below!
(1) Introduction
Nothing establishes common ground and credibility (ethos) quite like bringing everyone back to their childhood.
“Why did I really have to mow the lawn? Why was homework really that important? Why couldn’t I put jelly beans in my oatmeal?” (0:11s)
This moment was brilliantly crafted because it injects humour and hooks us in by encouraging us to think back to our personal interactions with our parents. In a lot of persuasive speeches, it’s extremely difficult to get the audience to care – and through his introduction, he does an excellent job of giving us a reason to do so. But most importantly, it was a subtle way to express the entire point of the talk: we are all the same.
(2) Emphasis
When it worked
During multiple parts of his speech, he really leveraged an increased volume, pace and overall force in his voice to create an emotional impact. An example can be found at 3:51, there was a significant build-up in what, in his view, the world should or shouldn’t be.
That the whims of adolescence are too dangerous for your breath, that you cannot simply be curious, that you are not afforded the luxury of making a mistake, that someone’s implicit bias might be the reason you don’t wake up in the morning.
By combining parallel structures (that you cannot…that you are not…), his intense delivery, and his poetry-esque style, it worked together to reinforce the passion and frustration he was feeling. He was able to effectively balance his anger without having the audience feeling bullied into buying into his arguments.
When it didn’t work
With that said, within the ~ 5-minute talk, we were brought to this high-intensity place quite a few times. There were a lot of written moments that could have been repurposed to take a softer approach by changing the delivery to something that had long pauses, a lower volume, and a slightly higher pitch near the end of sentences.
This carries a few purposes: it gives the audience a break from the high-intensity moments and creates contrast by seeking different emotions between key points of his speech (e.g. anger vs guilt vs sadness).
A few contenders for these moments
- Looked me in the eye, fear consuming his face, and said, “Son, I’m sorry, but you can’t act the same as your white friends. You can’t pretend to shoot guns. You can’t run around in the dark. You can’t hide behind anything other than your own teeth.” (2:43)
- And it’s not because they thought it would make us better than anyone else. It’s simply because they wanted to keep us alive. (3:34)
- But what does it do to a child to grow up knowing that you cannot simply be a child? (3:51)
All of these lines are about making a connection, either between two parties of a story or between the speaker and audience. They present a perfect opportunity to turn down the dial to give the audience a think about the grave importance of the topic while fostering a real moment that taps into a completely different set of emotions like sympathy or sadness.
I would also argue that he could have ended his speech in this style to really leave us with a high contrast, high impact moment as the last thing we remember from the speech. I think the intention to do something like that was there, but the execution could have been stronger.
Final Impressions
I really loved Smith’s talk because it was clearly something that was passionate and highly relatable. There were a lot of great moments and subtleties that the audience may not have even picked up on (how many times did he allude to breathing?).
He had an interesting speaking style that really caught my eye and balanced out his passionate voice with very subtle gestures (like the one at 4:09 where he shifts his hands towards to the audience than himself for “you and me”).
The elements I found to be the most powerful moments of his speech were at other times, the things I would have changed. The takeaway for me is that we need to create high impact moments sparingly.
With a little bit more tweaking to where he expresses all his emotions and perhaps reworking the conclusion to feel less abrupt, I think it would have made his message more impactful!
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