In Sharleen’s poem “What is White Privilege?” from Teen Ink, she discusses what she perceives as white privilege. She talks about police brutality, neo-Nazis, and terrorism, among other things, applying these characteristics and many more to all white people. This is not only racist, often off topic, and poorly written, but occasionally just wrong. For example, no one in the world sees the Vegas shooter as a country music fan, they see him as a bad person, and/or mentally ill, because he is. No sane human wants to slaughter defenseless masses for the fun of it; it is undeniable that this man was deeply troubled, and clearly he was experiencing a lot of pain. Blaming this sick, unfortunate soul's actions on the color of his skin, would not only be extremely hypocritical, it would also just be inhumane and wrong.

This poem serves as a perfect example for why I would be against the use this website for publishing my work. It is not only a piece that is written based off of emotion, rather than about logic and facts, but it is also rather poorly written and shallow. The poem invokes no deeper thinking, and because of its uneducated attempt to dismantle the opposing argument using logic, and the lack of half-decent writing, it also fails to conjure any intricate emotion from the reader, despite having such a charged subject. This is a common theme on this website, as teenagers can often act as hormonal imbeciles, who form stubborn and extreme opinions without a deep exploration of the topic because of a hive mind mentality generated by the goal of being cool. The ignorant, childish, and uneducated tone of this website would take away from my credibility, as well as cause readers not to take the piece as seriously. These effects would also be amplified by the silly gimmick that the site is “by teens for teens,” as well as make the piece feel less authentic and meaningful, as the immature stereotype of teens gives it a shallow feeling.