Youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman said she was racially profiled

By Teddy Grant Published: March 8, 2021

Youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman said she was racially profiled

American poet Amanda Gorman reads a poem during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, Pool)

Youth poet laureate Amanda Gorman, 22, said she was racially profiled outside of her home by a security guard last week, she revealed on Friday.

“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,” she wrote on her Instagram account.

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In January, Gorman became a household name when she read her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at the presidential inauguration in January, becoming the country’s youngest inaugural poet.

“In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance,” Gorman wrote. “Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be. A threat and proud.”