Fern Gillespie
When poet Kyla Jenee Lacey’s powerful spoken word performance of her poem “White Privilege” was shown in class by a Tennessee social studies school teacher in 2021, the poem became a lightning rod for White conservatives in fear of “Critical Race Theory” in the schools.
“About 3 to 4 years ago they were firing teachers left and right for having the gall to teach history from a correct lens,” Lacey told Our Time Press.
“Matthew Hahn was one of the teachers who was fired for using my work. He had given his class the Ta-Nehisi Coates essay. Then he was given a warning and then he showed them my “White Privilege” video. He finally won his case. But after he won, the School District of Sullivan County, Tennessee decided to appeal.”
When the “White Privilege” video went viral, it was the period of the pandemic and the George Floyd racial awakening. Her work continues to be part of the national CRT conversation. She’s been featured on “Last Week with John Oliver ” Tamron Hall and Laura Ingraham from Fox, ” who referred to her as “anti-– racist, propaganda.”
Her work has been discussed in the Washington Post, Boston Globe, New York Times and the Atlantic. As a journalist, she’s written for TheRoot.com, BET.com, Huffington Post, and currently has a column with Karen Hunter’s The Hub News online.
Lacey has garnered a reputation as a poet, writer, activist, spoken word artist, and storyteller with an acerbic sense of humor. “White Privilege” is personal for her. She had grown up in Florida since her family moved from Chicago at age nine.
Lacey was a smart young Black girl in honors programs attending predominantly White schools where her teachers sometimes overlooked her intelligence. At 10 years old, Lacey wrote her first poem, and her mother had it copyrighted.
“I grew up 20 minutes away from where Trayvon Martin was murdered. Just to kind of put that in perspective, George Zimmerman’s adjunct professor is literally one of my best friends,” she explained. “You know, even as an adult, I carry people insulting my intelligence as like one of my biggest things. A lot of my teachers didn’t like the fact that they brightest student was their darkest student.”
Lacey’s one-woman show of poetry, storytelling, and comedy has toured to over 300 colleges and universities in over 40 states. Her poems have been viewed collectively online about 10 million times. A Central Florida University graduate with a history degree, she speaks several languages, including French, German, and Spanish.
Lacey lives in Atlanta and is a pet person with four cats and a dog named Precola Breedlove in honor of Toni Morrison’s lead character in “The Bluest Eye.”
As a writer, she continues to be inspired by Toni Morrison. When the Atlantic wrote an article about CRT, Lacey’s name was mentioned in the same paragraph as Morrison’s. It was a phenomenal experience for her. “I cried. My mom taught me how to read, and I feel like Toni taught me how to write,” she said.
“I love the way that she could take words that had absolutely no reason for being in the same sentence and put them right next to each other. It was like the most beautiful combination. I liked how she was able to examine multiple things at a time in her books. I think that she really taught me the beauty of words.”
“White Privilege” continues to be taught in schools and colleges. “I’m hoping that I wrote a work that was able to withstand the test of time,” said Lacey.
Oh am I making you uncomfortable? try a cramped slave ship but wait, slavery is over now, it’s just called the prison system cuz like you’re not racist cuz you don’t use the ‘n’ word, but y’all use n*ggas everyday.
From White Privilege by Kyla Jenee Lacey
Kyla Jenee Lacey is scheduled to have her first one-woman spoken word performance in Brooklyn on Saturday, June 14, at the Juneteenth Festival at Herbert Von King Park on 670 Lafayette Ave. The year’s event is hosted by Baba Obediah Wright and features Iyaba Ibo Mandingo, Javier Gooden and FUSHA Dance Company.
There will be gospel, jazz, R&B, rap, poetry, swing dance, stepping, ballet, stilt walkers, face painting, pony rides, artists, and crafts. The Juneteenth Festival is presented by The Cooperative Culture Collective. Our Time Press is a media partner.