A guard followed me on my walk home tonight. He demanded if I lived there because “you look suspicious.” I showed my keys and buzzed myself into my building. He left without apology, ”Gorman wrote in a post on her verified Instagram account.
“This is the reality of black girls: one day you are called an icon, the next a threat,” she added.
In a later tweetsaid the 22-year-old: “In a way he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, inequality and ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is a clear and deadly danger to the powers that be. A threat and pride. “
It was only a few days ago that a mob of armed Trump supporters with knives, bombs and pepper spray stormed the Capitol.
The meeting with the guard Gorman describes is reminiscent of police brutality and aggression against black Americans, whose deaths have sparked national movements, including #BlackLivesMatter.
According to research from the National Academy of Sciences, black men are about 2.5 times more likely to die at the hands of the police in their lifetime compared to white men.
According to the 2019 study, black women are about 1.4 times more likely to be murdered by the police than white women, according to the researchers.
In March 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician, was shot and killed by police officers in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment during a flawed burglary raid.
Her death sparked a national rallying cry for racial justice and an overhaul of the policing system, including the #SayHerName campaign.
“#SayHerName is based on the sad reality that black women and girls who are targeted, assaulted and murdered by the police are all too often excluded from mainstream stories of police brutality,” the campaign’s webpage reads.
“You are not safe anywhere. Not even safe in your own home”, founder and lawyer of #SayHerName Kimberlé Crenshaw told CNN’s Erin Burnett.