Amanda Gorman, the young poet who made history at President Joe Biden’s inauguration in January, opened up about being racially profiled by a male guard while she was on her walk home.
On Twitter Friday night, the 22-year-old said she was walking to her apartment when a guard followed her, assuming she was a threat.
“A security guard tailed me on my walk home tonight. He demanded if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious.’ I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls: One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat,” she wrote.
The post quickly went viral, as Gorman has gained international fame since Jan. 20, when she become the youngest poet to ever recite a poem at a presidential inauguration.
In her poem “The Hill We Climb,” Gorman speaks openly about racial injustice in the country.
“We the successors of a country and a time / Where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother / can dream of becoming president / only to find herself reciting for one,” the poem reads.
About an hour after her first Twitter post Friday, Gorman reflected on her experience with the guard.
“In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance,” she wrote in a separate post.
“Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be,” she added.
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