Robin, a senior at Fayette County High School, received a standing ovation at her school when she gave a thoughtful and insightful speech explaining what white privilege is to her entire class.
Robin runs the People of Color Union club at her school, and so when her teacher encouraged them to choose their own topics for their speeches, she felt that she should choose one that addressed the injustices and systemic discrimination facing people of color.
“[Our teacher] tells us the area where we should create our topics and we all create our own individual ideas,” she told BuzzFeed News. “She told our class we had to do an informational speech so I was like, ‘Hey, why not discuss this with my class.’”
— Talib Kweli & Iggy Azalea argue on Twitter over Macklemore’s new single ‘White Privilege’ —
While Robin used a few slides for her speech, most of it was just spoken word as she directly addressed the myth that white privilege does not exist and backed up her information with facts.
“[White privilege] affects our daily society in our magazines … children are also influenced and I used the doll test as a reference,” she said. “We live in a Eurocentric society.”
Robin received a standing ovation for her speech and posted a picture of herself standing in front of one of her slides to Twitter, where it has gone viral, receiving both hate and praise.
I HAD THESE WHITE KIDS SHOOK pic.twitter.com/z8E3VPlkfF
— Robin (@thyrobin) October 21, 2016
“To the people who are writing hate comments, it doesn’t hurt me. I knew that posting this photo would get the buzz it did,” Robin told BET News. “I respond to them as nicely as I can and give them my way of seeing things, if they do not understand or do not want to understand I cannot force them to. I just know I changed at least one person’s mind on these things and that was in my classroom.”