Thanks for writing this, Lisa! This issue does overlap a lot with the gender wars. Complicated questions about who is the victim; blatant stereotyping; and of course misogyny.
I've had a few experiences where someone lashed out at me for being a "white woman." In one case, a woman disagreed with a comment I'd made on a friend's facebook post (none of it related to race) and in another, I'd asked a man on a crowded amtrak train if I could have the empty seat next to him. These experiences were really bizarre and I wouldn't believe them if they hadn't happened to me. Unfortunately, some people do hate white women and it's wrong that we let them indulge that hate openly.
You don’t mention the fact that Karen became a meme and a slur because it was a popular name in the late 50s - early 60s, meaning that it was supposedly descriptive of middle-aged white women. The age component was, I think, more (or equally) important than the race component when it first arose. White middle class women were brought up to be polite and nice above ALL else. “But I don’t want to be rude!” Was the mantra of their childhood, adolescent and early adulthood.
So they hit middle age after 5 decades of smiling in the face of whatever and they started to speak up because they really didn’t care anymore (and younger women seemed perfectly okay and non censured for speaking up) so they had the temerity to open their mouths and say something without first parsing every single word for niceness or making sure to keep that upward lilt to the end of every sentence.
1. Karens are famously and initially known for calling the police on loud house parties/barbecues.
When asking some assholes to turn down their obnoxiously loud ordinance violating party music 5 times resulted in the partiers laughing and turning up the music, the Karen just calls the police instead. Why not? Seems to me the entitlement is with the people who only care about what they want to do regardless of how it may impact the people around them. 10 o’clock at night? Who the fuck cares? Turn up the bass.
(And the customer service meme, demanding to speak to the manager. Well, if you’re in customer service 75% of your job is dealing with people who are frustrated and upset *usually for understandable reasons* and its very easy to diffuse the hostility in 90% of the cases. If you can’t figure it out, you should get another job, not film people with your cameras.
2. Central Park Karen, where the meme really spread from age dependent to race dependent.
You have a 6’3 man (with his activist sister hiding in the bushes so she can capture a viral video) and a 5’3” woman in a secluded part of Central Park. He *instructs* her to leash her dog and when she doesn’t comply, lures her dog to him with treats (causing her to scream at him to leave her and her dog alone), at which point HE gets up in her face and starts following her. She calls the police and describes him as a 6 foot tall black man who is threatening her in the park.
She is accused of being a racist because she described him as black and we are told that her sense of threat was ONLY because he was black.
He was portrayed as an innocent bird nerd minding his own business who is randomly targeted by a racist woman. Poor him.
She loses her dog and her job.
Well done!
NYT follows up with an op-ed article on how lynching was really the responsibility of white women and their tears and false accusations of rape (misogynistic much?). AND, *logically* the over representation of black men in prison is somehow in some significant but also insidious way ALSO the result of white women’s manipulative tears and false fears, prompting their big stupid racist men to preemptively incarcerate the poor innocent black men!!!!!!
3. Citibank Karen
Let’s just start by asking, how likely is it that a white 6months pregnant nurse is going to walk up to a group of 5 black teenagers and try to “steal” their bike rental? Seriously? I thought white women are racist for being terrified of groups of black teenagers and crossing the street and locking her car doors the moment she spies them for no good reason at all?
She should sue the shit out of every single one of the people who slandered and defamed her. She should really become a Karen and stomp through the China shop of anti-racist grifters and all their pandering supporters.
It's been distressing for me to hear from poc that poc can't be racist because they aren't on the top of the privilege ladder. I distinguish capital R Racism as systemic racism and yes that derives from power and most poc don't have that leverage (yet. can hope for a day when any group can oppress another equally). And then there is lower case r racism which is personal. Anyone in my view can be lower-case racist. Many groups hate each other as Do The Right Thing illustrated. No, they reply, that's bigotry. To which I reply: bigotry on the basis of race is racism, bigotry on the basis of sex is sexism, bigotry on the basis of age is ageism, and so on. One of the most destabilizing aspects of all identity activism is the constant shifting sands of definitions and categories that seem to change daily precisely to allow the morally clean to "gotcha" anyone not constantly reading social justice posts online. The mean-clique vibe is strong with this group
As a psychologist, I'm curious as to why I haven't heard any one question why it would be reasonable for a man to get into a physical tussle with a pregnant woman over a bike in the first place. Have I missed that conversation?
My understanding is that this bikeshare program charges $1200 to anyone who rents a bike and then doesn’t return it. If both people believed this particular bike was checked out in their name, I can see how they would have a vested interest in making sure a stranger didn’t ride off with it. That’s not to excuse anyone’s behavior here, just one extenuating factor in why this escalated the way it did. “Just turn the other cheek and find another one” takes on a different risk calculus when $1200 is on the line.
Good piece, Lisa. Personally, I own my Karen-ness. In fact, I frequently wish I was even more of a Karen. Calling someone a Karen is nothing more than a racist, misogynist and ageist slur to disempower and belittle women who have worked hard all our lives, fought many battles and finally feel that we can speak our minds. I will gladly be a Karen to stand up for my place in this world and yes, if I fork out my hard-earned money for substandard products and services I absolutely will continue to „speak to the manager“...
Although it’s not a good idea to analogize loosely, I can’t help but think of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. People were publicly shamed for their ascriptive identities (aspects we can’t change, such as our parentage, birth place, ethnicity, family status). One difference, perhaps, is that today’s victims can choose to fight back rather than accept their shaming.
I wonder who benefits from this ginning up of racial polarization?
Thank you for writing about this, particularly given your observation at the outset. Not easy to wade in on yet one more difficult thing--not an area I have wanted to wade into, either! Victoria Smith makes a good case for why we do need to pay attention to this, and your post here does the same, so thank you for speaking up. If any here aren’t aware of Smith, she has a new book out, Hags, and she has also written specifically on the convenient misogyny associated with calling white, middle-aged women Karens. Here is a review of the book, FYI: Article
I’m happy to read this for several reasons. For the reasons Lisa has eloquently stated and also for those of us whose name is Karen. I realize that many may not think that I should take the actual name seriously or let it bother me. I’m getting better about that, but I have to say that after 6 decades of really liking my name and identifying with it, I now cringe when I read about a “Karen.” Someone assumed to be an entitled, misbehaving, racist older white woman. Is there another category of disfavored people , male or female or any other race, that we have a single name for? Perhaps there is and I am unfamiliar with it. All I know is that it isn’t right.
The central idea, that it is impossible to be racist against white people, is mind-boggling for its denial and lack of seriousness.
The denial and the lack of intellectual seriousness combine to produce a type of American "cultural revolution" that wants to mimic Mao's cultural revolution, complete with re-education (DEI seminars), self-denunciations, public shaming, and shattered lives.
Then we have the conservative push-back against DEI that we currently see in Red States.
In the middle of the road we risk just being road-kill. But sometimes, nonetheless, we need to occupy the middle. That's my stance and I'm proud of it.
During the tRump years I lost friends who are African American. The tension was too much. The fear. The hate-mongering. The constant attacks and suspicions. ... Sustaining friendship in a situation where I'm constantly supposed to apologize for my existence, for my skin color, ... meanwhile the attacks on African Americans are very real. Their fear and righteous self-defense are very real.
As much as I regret lost friends, destroying oneself is never the right answer. It's never possible to apologize enough. Indeed, how can one person apologize for hundreds of years of history? The most we can do is to live into the future centered in peace, joy, and equanimity.
... Meanwhile the toxic hatred is like a poisonous gas that floats around destroying better possibilities. Those of us who believe in hope and joy need to avoid all hatreds, no matter who is espousing them.
I've never doubted that for many black Americans, probably most, there is a level of subtle (or not so) racism in society that must be burdensome and distressing to bear. And I don't doubt that the lingering effects of *true* structural racism (say, redlining, black veterans excluded from the GI Bill, things like that) are still echoing today in the lives of many black people.
But as a humanist, it drives me absolutely bananas to see white "progressives" and others valorize black people as if, by their wild and manifestly silly overcompensation, they can somehow right the wrongs of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining and all of it. That, it seems to me, is incredibly paternalistic, especially since black people know damned well that people who share their African ancestry are anything but perfect (which is true of any group of humans; ask a U.S. vet if all people who serve are "heroes" and see what he/she has to say).
Oppression does not convey wisdom or spiritual/moral purity. Any human paying the slightest bit of attention can see that.
These public shamings are performances (not by the victim, the pregnant physician assistant) to deflect from the reality of why our society has persistent racial inequality -- persistent social differences in behavior. It’s a huge deflection.
"Its not the same as being murdered or systemically oppressed." Really? Accountability & responsibility lies in the eye of the observer. Putting women's lives at risk: like Mississippi Burning Jessica Chambers or NOLA Linda Fricky or Toyin Salau, or Channon Christian or Christina Y. Lee, Renee Godwin, Tessa Majors or thousands of other women killed and "disappeared" (missing) by men every year, now, contemporarily not a century ago. This is happening all over the world, from Mexico where five women are murdered every day to S. Africa dubbed the rape capital of the world. The leading cause of death for pregnant women in the USA is homicide. 400, 000 rape kits lie untested in warehouses and police lockers signaling that rape is largely decriminalized and that women don't have equal protection under the law. Campaigns to get the rape kits tested have often been privately funded by contributions from working-class, socialist women like me, the same women who founded shelters for battered women and rape crisis centers. Feminists who've fought for civil rights for others have never received reciprocal support for women. Suffrage for women was fought against tooth and nail by tobacco, alcohol and child labor interests along with their one-time male abolitionists allies who betrayed women to solidify men's objectives to ultimately consolidate the power of male supermacy. And so it goes from time immemorial. Economist Amartya Sen estimates that there 100 million women missing, or the equivalent of the population of Norway, from the world population because of misogyny . Women, loyal to men or desperate for male approval, help to shore up this systemic, global condition.
Don’t worry that genius Benjamin Crump has already deleted his tweet accusing the young woman of racism. Why? She lawyered up and he’s going to get accused of defamation. The quote in article from Roxanne Gay was hilarious. She doesn’t know a thing about the woman yet she impugns her clinical care. Again a street performance.
Great essay, thanks so much. I have many lovely friends named Karen, and when I hear the name used as a slur, I cringe inside for my friends. I hate that white women are targeted like this. About 5 years or so ago, I made some fairly innocuous comment on social media, and my old boyfriend from high school, who is of Mexican descent, accused me of being racist. Really? I unfriended him (he’d become increasingly crazy in his posts) and never interacted with him again. Frankly, it scared the crap out of me to be labeled that, as it’s so easy to do now. And if you vehemently deny it, you’re labeled anyway.
As a white woman with a step-daughter who is half Creole, and being raised as a Democrat, I’m the farthest thing from that, but it has such terrifying power to me. I hate that I feel this way and go out of my way to avoid those confrontations, as I also hate having to say, “I’m not, and never have been, racist.” But how to prove that without pandering? Ugh.
I want to encourage anyone here who agrees with Lisa’s concerns to restack this post with a comment. I have just done so, and here is what I wrote: “I have watched the video available several times. I don’t know what happened here, but I do think the piling on this young woman is inappropriate. I ask everyone to step back, read what Lisa says, and take a deep breath before passing judgment on her, six months pregnant, working as a physician’s assistant at Bellevue Hospital, a public hospital that disproportionately serves the poor and people of color. That is a very tough, often thankless job, not something you do if you are a hardened career person who only wants to get ahead. At the very least, she is entitled to due process and the benefit of the doubt. I am generally concerned that, at present, women and girls have become all too easy targets for all of society’s ills. It’s really easy to punch down, but it solves nothing. Please stop and think, before judging. Roxane Gay, that includes you.”
Thanks for writing this, Lisa! This issue does overlap a lot with the gender wars. Complicated questions about who is the victim; blatant stereotyping; and of course misogyny.
I've had a few experiences where someone lashed out at me for being a "white woman." In one case, a woman disagreed with a comment I'd made on a friend's facebook post (none of it related to race) and in another, I'd asked a man on a crowded amtrak train if I could have the empty seat next to him. These experiences were really bizarre and I wouldn't believe them if they hadn't happened to me. Unfortunately, some people do hate white women and it's wrong that we let them indulge that hate openly.
No matter who you are there are some humans who hate you for your ethnicity, sex and a host of other things. That's a fact, although wrong and unfair.
That is true. I guess the problem then, is when someone is placed on leave or has their life ruined because of it...
You don’t mention the fact that Karen became a meme and a slur because it was a popular name in the late 50s - early 60s, meaning that it was supposedly descriptive of middle-aged white women. The age component was, I think, more (or equally) important than the race component when it first arose. White middle class women were brought up to be polite and nice above ALL else. “But I don’t want to be rude!” Was the mantra of their childhood, adolescent and early adulthood.
So they hit middle age after 5 decades of smiling in the face of whatever and they started to speak up because they really didn’t care anymore (and younger women seemed perfectly okay and non censured for speaking up) so they had the temerity to open their mouths and say something without first parsing every single word for niceness or making sure to keep that upward lilt to the end of every sentence.
1. Karens are famously and initially known for calling the police on loud house parties/barbecues.
When asking some assholes to turn down their obnoxiously loud ordinance violating party music 5 times resulted in the partiers laughing and turning up the music, the Karen just calls the police instead. Why not? Seems to me the entitlement is with the people who only care about what they want to do regardless of how it may impact the people around them. 10 o’clock at night? Who the fuck cares? Turn up the bass.
(And the customer service meme, demanding to speak to the manager. Well, if you’re in customer service 75% of your job is dealing with people who are frustrated and upset *usually for understandable reasons* and its very easy to diffuse the hostility in 90% of the cases. If you can’t figure it out, you should get another job, not film people with your cameras.
2. Central Park Karen, where the meme really spread from age dependent to race dependent.
You have a 6’3 man (with his activist sister hiding in the bushes so she can capture a viral video) and a 5’3” woman in a secluded part of Central Park. He *instructs* her to leash her dog and when she doesn’t comply, lures her dog to him with treats (causing her to scream at him to leave her and her dog alone), at which point HE gets up in her face and starts following her. She calls the police and describes him as a 6 foot tall black man who is threatening her in the park.
She is accused of being a racist because she described him as black and we are told that her sense of threat was ONLY because he was black.
He was portrayed as an innocent bird nerd minding his own business who is randomly targeted by a racist woman. Poor him.
She loses her dog and her job.
Well done!
NYT follows up with an op-ed article on how lynching was really the responsibility of white women and their tears and false accusations of rape (misogynistic much?). AND, *logically* the over representation of black men in prison is somehow in some significant but also insidious way ALSO the result of white women’s manipulative tears and false fears, prompting their big stupid racist men to preemptively incarcerate the poor innocent black men!!!!!!
3. Citibank Karen
Let’s just start by asking, how likely is it that a white 6months pregnant nurse is going to walk up to a group of 5 black teenagers and try to “steal” their bike rental? Seriously? I thought white women are racist for being terrified of groups of black teenagers and crossing the street and locking her car doors the moment she spies them for no good reason at all?
She should sue the shit out of every single one of the people who slandered and defamed her. She should really become a Karen and stomp through the China shop of anti-racist grifters and all their pandering supporters.
It's been distressing for me to hear from poc that poc can't be racist because they aren't on the top of the privilege ladder. I distinguish capital R Racism as systemic racism and yes that derives from power and most poc don't have that leverage (yet. can hope for a day when any group can oppress another equally). And then there is lower case r racism which is personal. Anyone in my view can be lower-case racist. Many groups hate each other as Do The Right Thing illustrated. No, they reply, that's bigotry. To which I reply: bigotry on the basis of race is racism, bigotry on the basis of sex is sexism, bigotry on the basis of age is ageism, and so on. One of the most destabilizing aspects of all identity activism is the constant shifting sands of definitions and categories that seem to change daily precisely to allow the morally clean to "gotcha" anyone not constantly reading social justice posts online. The mean-clique vibe is strong with this group
Very well put, Rebecca!
As a psychologist, I'm curious as to why I haven't heard any one question why it would be reasonable for a man to get into a physical tussle with a pregnant woman over a bike in the first place. Have I missed that conversation?
My understanding is that this bikeshare program charges $1200 to anyone who rents a bike and then doesn’t return it. If both people believed this particular bike was checked out in their name, I can see how they would have a vested interest in making sure a stranger didn’t ride off with it. That’s not to excuse anyone’s behavior here, just one extenuating factor in why this escalated the way it did. “Just turn the other cheek and find another one” takes on a different risk calculus when $1200 is on the line.
Good point.
Good piece, Lisa. Personally, I own my Karen-ness. In fact, I frequently wish I was even more of a Karen. Calling someone a Karen is nothing more than a racist, misogynist and ageist slur to disempower and belittle women who have worked hard all our lives, fought many battles and finally feel that we can speak our minds. I will gladly be a Karen to stand up for my place in this world and yes, if I fork out my hard-earned money for substandard products and services I absolutely will continue to „speak to the manager“...
Although it’s not a good idea to analogize loosely, I can’t help but think of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. People were publicly shamed for their ascriptive identities (aspects we can’t change, such as our parentage, birth place, ethnicity, family status). One difference, perhaps, is that today’s victims can choose to fight back rather than accept their shaming.
I wonder who benefits from this ginning up of racial polarization?
Thank you for writing about this, particularly given your observation at the outset. Not easy to wade in on yet one more difficult thing--not an area I have wanted to wade into, either! Victoria Smith makes a good case for why we do need to pay attention to this, and your post here does the same, so thank you for speaking up. If any here aren’t aware of Smith, she has a new book out, Hags, and she has also written specifically on the convenient misogyny associated with calling white, middle-aged women Karens. Here is a review of the book, FYI: Article
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/c13e6b5c-b38b-11ed-bc64-f71663a88018?shareToken=ded321507e8475daebb34010cffe6838
I’m happy to read this for several reasons. For the reasons Lisa has eloquently stated and also for those of us whose name is Karen. I realize that many may not think that I should take the actual name seriously or let it bother me. I’m getting better about that, but I have to say that after 6 decades of really liking my name and identifying with it, I now cringe when I read about a “Karen.” Someone assumed to be an entitled, misbehaving, racist older white woman. Is there another category of disfavored people , male or female or any other race, that we have a single name for? Perhaps there is and I am unfamiliar with it. All I know is that it isn’t right.
Fantastic piece and yes Karen is a deeply racist and misogynist term.
The central idea, that it is impossible to be racist against white people, is mind-boggling for its denial and lack of seriousness.
The denial and the lack of intellectual seriousness combine to produce a type of American "cultural revolution" that wants to mimic Mao's cultural revolution, complete with re-education (DEI seminars), self-denunciations, public shaming, and shattered lives.
Then we have the conservative push-back against DEI that we currently see in Red States.
In the middle of the road we risk just being road-kill. But sometimes, nonetheless, we need to occupy the middle. That's my stance and I'm proud of it.
During the tRump years I lost friends who are African American. The tension was too much. The fear. The hate-mongering. The constant attacks and suspicions. ... Sustaining friendship in a situation where I'm constantly supposed to apologize for my existence, for my skin color, ... meanwhile the attacks on African Americans are very real. Their fear and righteous self-defense are very real.
As much as I regret lost friends, destroying oneself is never the right answer. It's never possible to apologize enough. Indeed, how can one person apologize for hundreds of years of history? The most we can do is to live into the future centered in peace, joy, and equanimity.
... Meanwhile the toxic hatred is like a poisonous gas that floats around destroying better possibilities. Those of us who believe in hope and joy need to avoid all hatreds, no matter who is espousing them.
I've never doubted that for many black Americans, probably most, there is a level of subtle (or not so) racism in society that must be burdensome and distressing to bear. And I don't doubt that the lingering effects of *true* structural racism (say, redlining, black veterans excluded from the GI Bill, things like that) are still echoing today in the lives of many black people.
But as a humanist, it drives me absolutely bananas to see white "progressives" and others valorize black people as if, by their wild and manifestly silly overcompensation, they can somehow right the wrongs of slavery, Jim Crow, redlining and all of it. That, it seems to me, is incredibly paternalistic, especially since black people know damned well that people who share their African ancestry are anything but perfect (which is true of any group of humans; ask a U.S. vet if all people who serve are "heroes" and see what he/she has to say).
Oppression does not convey wisdom or spiritual/moral purity. Any human paying the slightest bit of attention can see that.
These public shamings are performances (not by the victim, the pregnant physician assistant) to deflect from the reality of why our society has persistent racial inequality -- persistent social differences in behavior. It’s a huge deflection.
"Its not the same as being murdered or systemically oppressed." Really? Accountability & responsibility lies in the eye of the observer. Putting women's lives at risk: like Mississippi Burning Jessica Chambers or NOLA Linda Fricky or Toyin Salau, or Channon Christian or Christina Y. Lee, Renee Godwin, Tessa Majors or thousands of other women killed and "disappeared" (missing) by men every year, now, contemporarily not a century ago. This is happening all over the world, from Mexico where five women are murdered every day to S. Africa dubbed the rape capital of the world. The leading cause of death for pregnant women in the USA is homicide. 400, 000 rape kits lie untested in warehouses and police lockers signaling that rape is largely decriminalized and that women don't have equal protection under the law. Campaigns to get the rape kits tested have often been privately funded by contributions from working-class, socialist women like me, the same women who founded shelters for battered women and rape crisis centers. Feminists who've fought for civil rights for others have never received reciprocal support for women. Suffrage for women was fought against tooth and nail by tobacco, alcohol and child labor interests along with their one-time male abolitionists allies who betrayed women to solidify men's objectives to ultimately consolidate the power of male supermacy. And so it goes from time immemorial. Economist Amartya Sen estimates that there 100 million women missing, or the equivalent of the population of Norway, from the world population because of misogyny . Women, loyal to men or desperate for male approval, help to shore up this systemic, global condition.
Don’t worry that genius Benjamin Crump has already deleted his tweet accusing the young woman of racism. Why? She lawyered up and he’s going to get accused of defamation. The quote in article from Roxanne Gay was hilarious. She doesn’t know a thing about the woman yet she impugns her clinical care. Again a street performance.
Great essay, thanks so much. I have many lovely friends named Karen, and when I hear the name used as a slur, I cringe inside for my friends. I hate that white women are targeted like this. About 5 years or so ago, I made some fairly innocuous comment on social media, and my old boyfriend from high school, who is of Mexican descent, accused me of being racist. Really? I unfriended him (he’d become increasingly crazy in his posts) and never interacted with him again. Frankly, it scared the crap out of me to be labeled that, as it’s so easy to do now. And if you vehemently deny it, you’re labeled anyway.
As a white woman with a step-daughter who is half Creole, and being raised as a Democrat, I’m the farthest thing from that, but it has such terrifying power to me. I hate that I feel this way and go out of my way to avoid those confrontations, as I also hate having to say, “I’m not, and never have been, racist.” But how to prove that without pandering? Ugh.
These issues all bleed into each other. We are betraying the vision so many of us grew up with. Thank you for writing this.
Yes, it often feels that way!
I want to encourage anyone here who agrees with Lisa’s concerns to restack this post with a comment. I have just done so, and here is what I wrote: “I have watched the video available several times. I don’t know what happened here, but I do think the piling on this young woman is inappropriate. I ask everyone to step back, read what Lisa says, and take a deep breath before passing judgment on her, six months pregnant, working as a physician’s assistant at Bellevue Hospital, a public hospital that disproportionately serves the poor and people of color. That is a very tough, often thankless job, not something you do if you are a hardened career person who only wants to get ahead. At the very least, she is entitled to due process and the benefit of the doubt. I am generally concerned that, at present, women and girls have become all too easy targets for all of society’s ills. It’s really easy to punch down, but it solves nothing. Please stop and think, before judging. Roxane Gay, that includes you.”