POET GORMAN SAYS SHE WAS RACIALLY PROFILED

Amanda Gorman, who was widely praised after she recited her poetry at President Joe Biden’s inauguration, alleged Friday that a security guard had followed her home and told her she appeared “suspicious.”

“A security guard tailed me on my walk home tonight,” Gorman, 22, wrote on Twitter. “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.”

The poet added: “In a sense, he was right. 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, the youngest poet to read her work at an inauguration, did not say where the incident allegedly occurred or name the guard’s employer. She did not immediately respond Saturday to messages sent through her website and her publicists.

Gorman has spoken forcefully about racial issues. She appended her first statement about the alleged profiling to a previous tweet with a Washington Post article reporting that while Gorman was being celebrated, police officers in Rochester, N.Y., pepper-sprayed a 9year-old Black girl.

The alleged profiling of Gorman comes amid a national conversation about structural racism, including the suspicion that many Black people face in their daily lives. Several other high-profile Black Americans have said they were racially profiled, including former SNL cast member Jay Pharoah, retired tennis player James Blake and entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey.

Amanda Gorman