White Privilege Poem Analysis

Some topics are hard to talk about but as Poet Kyla Lacey said “the conversation may stop but the racism continues.”
This was one of the ideas behind her most well known poem titled “White Privilege” which she performed in the UC Down Under Feb. 22 for an intimate crowd.
Kyla Lacey was born in Chicago, lived in Orlando, but currently resides in Atlanta. She is a proud cat mom, had her first poem copy written at age 10, and has now performed at over 200 colleges.
“I kind of have always been a writer,” said Lacey who recalled writing her poem at 10 years old saying” I just wrote it one day and it was called ‘The World’. It was about the world and ‘all the confusion, all the neglect, all the hatred and disrespect.’”
Lacey joked about being an ‘intense kid’ who also wanted to be a vegetarian and was very ‘existential’.
It wasn’t until her 20s when she began to actually consider performing her poetry.
She wrote a lot of love poems. One of the first poems she performed was for an ex-boyfriend but has since evolved and has tackled different topics. “I have always been controversial I guess, but I grew up in Seminole County Florida and for reference it’s where Trayvon Martin was murdered and it was the first big headline catching murder of its kind. It was really interesting to see the reactions from people I was friends with to George Zimmerman’s acquittal” said Lacey.
She also remembers growing up in Seminole County and always “being the exception.” Lacey scored really high on the ACT and consistently did well in school. However, she often found herself being devalued by some