Amanda Gorman shares racial profiling incident: ‘this is the reality of Black girls’
- The National Youth Poet Laureate, who spoke at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, detailed an encounter with a security guard who followed her home
- Gorman said this latest incident of racism and discrimination highlights an ever-present danger for young Black women
“He demanded if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious’,” tweeted Gorman, the Harvard graduate and National Youth Poet Laureate. “I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology.”
Gorman said this latest incident of racism and discrimination highlights an ever-present danger. “This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat.”
“In a sense, he was right,” Gorman added in another tweet. “I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be.”
Gorman experienced racial profiling just weeks after calling out “a contradictory society that can celebrate a black girl poet & also pepper spray a 9 yr old”, referring to a Black girl who was pepper sprayed and handcuffed by police in Rochester, New York in February.