The specter of Karen persisted
Number 9473381 in the series “Why we really really need to call racist white women ‘Karens’.”
There was no direct connection between the “Central Park Karen” incident in New York City and the police killing of 46-year-old George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, beyond the coincidence of timing.
But let’s plant the idea anyway.
The specter of Karen persisted as Black Lives Matter protests and civil unrest spread around the country following Floyd’s murder and reckonings with racism began to roil institutions, toppling careers as well as statues. More than just an amusing meme, Karen allowed for a new kind of discourse about racism to gain credence in the US.
Actually it’s a very old kind of discourse: the misogynist kind.
“We as a culture have adopted this stance that white women are more virtuous and not complicit in upholding racism in particular,” said Apryl Williams, a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan. “They just sort of go along with it, but they’re not conscious actors. The Karen meme says, no, they are conscious actors. These are deliberate actions. They are complicit. And I think that’s why it strikes a nerve with people.”
But the Karen meme also says women are bitches. That too is why it strikes a nerve with some people.
… Amy Cooper took on the mantle of an American archetype: the white woman who weaponizes her vulnerability to exact violence upon a Black man. In history, she is Carolyn Bryant, the adult white woman whose complaint about a 14-year-old Emmett Till led to his torture and murder at the hands of racist white adults. In literature, she is Scarlett O’Hara sending her husband out to join a KKK lynching party or Mayella Ewell testifying under oath that a Black man who had helped her had raped her. In 2020, she is simply Karen.
The Carolyn Bryant example gets cited a lot, but the interesting thing about that is that she didn’t torture and murder Emmett Till. Scarlett O’Hara and Mayella Ewell are of course characters in novels, so they can hardly provide evidence of real life actions by real women.
Of course there are racist white women, and of course some of them do racist things, but we can say that without this invidious “Becky/Karen/Goldilocks” thing. There are angry sexist violent black men, too, but we can talk about that without giving them a contemptuous nickname. These “memes” which are actually just contemptuous nicknames don’t make anything better.
The thing is, they are using it for women who are not racist, as well. It seems to have become a name that just means “middle-aged white woman”. We sin merely by being white and female; our actions are not in question. It is the assumption. And…as you noted, it is white men who perpetrate the violence. While the white women who point fingers and accuse are certainly guilty of their own actions, the Karen meme seems to make them the only guilty party. I heard that stated before I ever heard of Karen, at a production of Amiri Baraka’s The Dutchman. For the young black man who played the lead, the young woman on the train who committed the act of violence herself, stabbing and killing a young black man, is representative of all white women. The issue of white men who commit violence never got mentioned in the talk back.
Never mind that, while the life of a white woman married to the plantation owner was truly easier and better than that of the slaves, she was not in a position of power (although the young actor insisted that she was, that she had more power than anyone). Often the women didn’t even own the property they brought to the marriage, and beatings were not uncommon. So they had power over no one…except…if they could convince their husbands that black slaves had raped them, or sassed them, or wolf whistled them. It was an ugly way to get attention, or to feel empowered. The women were as racist as their husbands. But the women were not the ones who administered the beatings.
A common theme in this regard – both racism and trans – seems to be to exculpate the white man, to remove him from any sense of guilt by making the white woman responsible. I don’t think anti-racists necessarily mean that, since almost all the cops who have killed black men have been male, but it is the overall effect in many ways. White women are evil demons, the meme says…and the constant “it only refers to racist white women” has lost its meaning. It isn’t true anymore, if it ever was.
So, by all means. Let’s excuse violent men. It is women who cause all the violence…even though it isn’t.
My view is roughly this:
1. Lots of people are assholes who want to impose their will on other people, whether out of genuine dislike for the target, misplaced aggression, or a general desire to make themselves feel tough and important.
2. In our society, men often have the option of manifesting that aggression in ways that involve express or implicit threats of physical violence, while women generally don’t. So assholes who are women tend to display their aggression by invoking authority figures like “the manager” or the police.
3. Since racism is a thing in our society, the targets of aggression from white assholes tend to be non-whites. Partly because non-whites doing things that they’re “not supposed” to be doing provokes more anger, partly because non-whites are safer targets.
So I think the “Karen” meme was an attempt to name a real phenomenon. It’s not that white women are more likely to be assholes or more likely to be racist, just that their assholishness and racism tends to manifest in a specific way.
But I concede that it may be a term that has outlived its usefulness thanks to overuse and abuse, including by people with misogynist motivations.
Sorry, Screechy, I cannot see that there was any need to “name” a phenomenon. It has a name: racist. bigot. It does not need a name to separate out women and “name” them. Yes, women may be more likely to “call the manager” or the police. Why is this somehow worse than the violence of the men? Because that is the message we are receiving these days. I don’t see anywhere near the focus on white male racist assholes as I do on “Karens”. It is not a phenomenon that needs a special name, it is just that there is a special name to hate on women specifically.
We are people. If we are racist, we are racist. If we are assholes, we are assholes. Giving us a separate meme and a name believed to somehow scream out white woman is a misogynistic move, and always was. Yes, there is a real thing about white women racists. So call them that. Racists.
I don’t see how it follows that something has to be “worse” than something else to merit a name.
For example, “mansplaining” is, in the grand scheme of things, a fairly minor offense in and of itself. It’s condescending and insulting, but it doesn’t physically injure anyone or make them materially worse off. And we have plenty of gender-neutral terms that could be used instead. Yet I see no problem with the term.
I guess I sort of see what Screechy means @ 2 – “Karens” are passive-aggressive; racists by proxy. But I still don’t see why that’s particularly in need of a contemptuous female-specific name when there is no equivalent name for racist men.
Screechy @ 4 – But “mansplaining” isn’t Billsplaining or Kensplaining. It’s generic. “Karen” is not generic. If Donald Trump started raging about “Juans” or “Mohammeds” we would all know what to think. “Karens” is like that.
Yes, right when Karen was becoming ascendant those racist pricks *HUNTED* that poor jogging bastard…
What’s the name for them?
“Karen” originally had nothing to do with the person in question being racist. It was used to describe a demanding woman, usually stereotyped as a middle-aged white woman, who makes excessive demands and is always threatening to speak to the manager if they’re not met.
Amy Cooper got described as a “karen” so apparently now “karens” are racist.
I agree the term isn’t great. I think Dr. Iknklast is correct that we should just call racist people “racists”.
Women who incite men to beat or kill people for racist reasons are as culpable as those doing the actual beating. Nobody is excusing the men who do it, but if someone gets them to do it, and knows they’ll do it, they caused it to happen just as much as the person doing it. It’s the same as a man hiring someone to murder his wife. The husband and killer are both equally at fault.
“Karen” was being used to mean racist white woman well before the Central Park incident though.
BKiSA, I believe those particular murdering arseholes were described as wonderful men defending the community. /s
Are you sure? I could be wrong, but I remember “BBQ Becky”, “Permit Patty”, “Cornerstore Caroline”, “Alliterative Alice” (OK, I made that one up), etc., as the racist women. Karen was just the “can I speak to the the manager?” woman until it got applied to Amy Cooper. And, honestly, the guy was the one being the “karen” (“You’re not allowed to have dogs here!”) in that situation. Amy Cooper was not the “karen” but rather the racist piece of garbage that called the police and said she was being threatened by a Black man and acted all terrified when the man hadn’t done anything even vaguely threatening (he was complaining that her dog was disturbing songbirds; hardly the move of a violent Black militant).
For what it’s worth, I first came across Karen as referring to the woman who wants to speak to the manager, as Skeletor describes, and without any racist implications. I think that’s the way it tends to be used in the UK, for the most part: annoying, middle class, midde-aged woman with asymmetrical hair who wants to talk to the manager.
My experience with “Karen” mimics Skeletor’s and latsot’s, too, and is confirmed by Know Your Meme here: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karen
And from that origin, I actually have a theory why it became a thing–because women do most of the household shopping (just like they do most of all the other housework, whether or not they’re a part of a two-job couple), and white women make up a majority of middle-class shoppers, because America is still racist as hell. I work in retail, but it’s a hardware/home-improvement store, and in there, most of the “Karens” (ie, people who make unreasonable demands, call for the managers, etc) are actually named either Sergei or Himanshu (we have a lot of Indian and Eastern European contractors who come in, and while asshole shoppers are a rarity, they are the most memorable part of your day when they come in). So the ‘trend’ is mostly a sampling bias–a percentage of shoppers at any store will be royal pains in the ass, and in a typical grocery store or clothing store, those shoppers will be predominantly white, female and middle- or upper-middle-class.
To add: I’m not denying the misogyny behind the term–obviously, that is why it went from being just a quick one-off by a stage comic to a running online meme. The internet will always take the opportunity to bash women, and hiding behind a very thin facade of anti-racism is a wonderful way to do that.
Yes I’m sure.
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2020/over-some-karen-in-europe/