“A security guard took me home on my hike tonight. He asked if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious’. I showed my keys and waved my house. He’s gone, no excuse,” Gorman said. written in a post on her verified Instagram account.
“This is the reality of black girls: one day you are called an icon, the next day a threat,” she added.
In a later tweet, the 22-year-old said: “In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Everyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious lying and fatal danger to the ‘threat and pride.’
It was only days since a crowd of armed Trump supporters stormed the Capitol with knives, bombs and pepper spray.
The encounter with the security guard Gorman describes is reminiscent of police violence and aggression against black Americans, whose deaths have fueled national movements, including #BlackLivesMatter.
According to research from the National Academy of Sciences, black men are about 2.5 times more likely to die during police life compared to white men.
According to the 2019 study, black women are about 1.4 times more likely to be killed by police compared to white women.
In March 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency technician, was shot dead by police officers at her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, during a false attack.
Her death led to a national rally for racial justice and a overhaul of the police system, including the #SayHerName campaign.
“#SayHerName is based on the sad reality that black women and girls targeted, brutalized and murdered by the police are too often excluded from main stories surrounding police violence,” reads the campaign’s website.
“You are nowhere safe. Not even safe in your own home,” founds #SayHerName founder and lawyer Kimberlé Crenshaw said Erin Burnett of CNN.