I know originally Karen was used as a slur for exclusively “White middle aged women with too much time on their hands” but there’s been more and more videos lately of Karen’s of other races who act just as entitled as “White Karens”. However people seem to really being pushing back against these people being labeled Karens, with some people claiming “Only white self-entitlement leads to someone being a Karen”.
To me, a Karen can be any woman, self-entitlement plays a part but I’ve always seen it as a class thing, Middle-Class people in general have massive amounts of self-entitlement so that you get the suburban Hispanic/Black/Asian Karens who act exactly the same as White Karens. I personally witnesses a Black Karen in public a month ago, a middle aged woman threatened to call the cops on two black men who were taking up two spots in a mostly empty parking lot because apparently she wanted to park right next to them in this giant empty parking lot. If that isn’t Karen behavior I don’t know what is.
So, do you subscribe to “Only White Karen” theory, or the “All Karens” approach?
I consider “Karen” a behavioral matter with skin color irrelevant. I don’t necessarily see it as a class issue, either, since I’ve seen that behavior in people (of all pigmentation) who were otherwise quite “ghetto”.
If you read my actual post you’d see there’s a large amount of people who deny the fact a Black Karen can even exist. I was asking if that was the mainstream opinion.
The Karen slur has already morphed into nonsense, slung anytime a video is posted with someone they are trying to score cheap points against.
Karen-ness is bigger than race, creed, nationality, and even sex or gender. It is an attitude of unreasonable entitlement, an expectation that rules apply selectively and that Karen’s arbitrary needs trump any objection.
I wonder whether younger generations will be able to discern the difference between that and assertiveness. Self-advocacy is important, yet there are constraints.
Right on this board I was not long ago called out and with great expression of incredulity over referring to a black woman “going Karen”. Granted it was by one single member but still another frequent participant, not one of our random drivebyers. And we have already had an actual thread asking if “Karen” does in fact involve a factor of sexism/racial dynamics.
So at least it is true there is a nontrivial number of people who will claim that Karen can only exist from the basis of white privilege and even that it would be wrong to say a black person is acting like a Karen.
No, because White Privilege can get away with that. I’d love to see the police reaction if a Black woman called and said the very same thing about a white person.
Okay, thanks for clarifying. I was juggling around “Karen”, “Black Karen” (100% sure that’s not good), “Felicia / Felisha” and trying to pick out the worst of the lot.
Can’t we just go race and gender-neutral and use “Asshole” as a catch-all? It sucks if you named your child something that ends up carrying a negative association. If you happen to name your kid “Asshole”, that’s a whole other set of problems there…
The essence of Karenhood is the confidence that you can invoke the powers that be, and those powers will take your side. It’s not every white woman, but it’s only white women (white men are more likely to use physical violence).
I don’t say “Karen” anymore, I use “whitelady” instead because that’s exactly what it is. Somebody invoking whiteness to make the situation more comfortable for whiteness.