Of course it is racist and sexist. It is a derogative term that only applies to one race and sex.
Some of the responses remind me of Robert Byrd talking about how whitepeople can be n-words too. Anyone can be an entitled jerk but only someone of a certain race and sex can be a Karen.
Whether or not racism and sexism is a big deal when applied to white women is a separate issue.
Again, anyone of any race or gender can be a Karen. It is the behavior that makes something an example being a Karen. It is making fun of specific behaviors, not making fun of all middle aged white women. This outrage seems manufactured and frankly kind of ridiculous.
Dictionary.com says this:
If it’s not about middle aged white women, then we could substitute any name and it still would work. But we don’t do this substitution, because “John” or "Ebony just don’t conjure the same mental associations that “Karen” does.
The “Karen” thing is much like calling anyone who cuts in front of traffic “Wang” because of the Asian bad driver stereotype.
Can you find instances of black men being ridiculed for being Karens?
Middle aged concerned black man on the phone has been a meme for a very long time:
https://me.me/i/black-guy-on-the-phone-know-your-meme-f1e3055bc80642a8a0ff5aba8610550f
This is peak “white people are the real victims of discrimination!” in action.
It’s fine to call out white privileged behavior. It might be observed to take a certain form with middle aged white women, and I can see how it would emerge as a meme. But when it turns into a weapon, an insult, it doesn’t seem particularly valid to gender the insult.
When used specifically against white female politicians, I would say that it is definitely sexist. This is a context where the people involved – politicians – are all about speaking out, but female politicians get labeled as strident, shrill, overly aggressive, trying too hard, and as “screaming about” things regularly when their male counter parts rarely get the same description. There is social pressure for outspoken women to shut up. Applying a gendered negative meme to female politicians looks like that kind of reaction/pressure to me.
I agree that sexist remarks toward female politicians are awful and wrong. Declaring that the name “Karen” is itself racist and sexist seems a huge overreach though.
Also, even if it was stipulated that the word “Karen” is racist and sexist and should no longer be used in social media, how do you suggest this be controlled? Government control over everyone’s twitter and facebook? There is no solution here.
Louis Armstrong’s nickname was derived from “satchelmouth,” a name he was called as a kid. If anyone else has been called that, it was in reference to Armstrong.
Lots of stuff called ‘racist’ against non-whites is not directly for their race; it’s just deemed to be constructively, indirectly etc that way to particular people.
I think it basically comes down to whether one accepts the argument for a double standard laid out in the second paragraph. In general I do not. Beyond that it’s really just debating ‘my basic worldview is superior’, ‘no mine is!’.
If the context is classifying a person by their race, whether white or any other race. It’s not racist to say ‘many whites have a sense of entitlement’ just as it isn’t racist to say ‘the crime rate among African Americans is higher than among whites’. Neither statement has to be accepted as true, but neither is racist whether or not accepted as true. Attaching that generality to a particular person is what is racist* IMO. I believe this ‘meme’ (though I’d never heard of it until recently) is used that way, and is thus racist.
Sexist? Hard to see how it could be argued it’s not if used basically as ‘you’re one of those typical x women’. But it’s pretty much as obviously racist IMO unless one adopts the proposed double standard, where it’s OK to say ‘you’re a typical white x’, ‘because of history’.
*in the sense of prejudice or bias; saying it’s not racist because ‘racism’ only means theories of racial superiority is ridiculous. The word’s meaning goes beyond that for almost everybody, though it has become ambiguous exactly what it means, it’s true.
Telling us will not change a thing, you really need to speak to the manager.
I’m still waiting for a single constructive suggestion of how to fix this problem, even if we all stipulate that it is a problem. We are talking about how millions of people behave on the internet. This is not something that anyone has any control over.
I don’t think anyone is saying the NAME Karen is sexist and racist. The Karen meme is what is being discussed. Calling a person by the name Karen if that is the person’s name is not an instance of the meme. Calling a person “a Karen,” or calling a person by the name Karen when that is not their name, may be an instance of the meme. Responding to a white middle aged female politician who is talking politics with a dismissive reference to the meme is sexist.
No one is remotely talking about banning anything. There are an infinite number of reactions to seeing sexism in action that are not putting the government in control of social media. Wow.
Ok, so what do you suggest? Can you name one of these infinite reactions that will actually do anything to stop this from happening?
Still waiting for any constructive suggestion. I do agree that using that meme to insult female politicians is wrong. But, so what? What can we do about it? That is the question that nobody will address. Wow indeed.
Look at the thread title…
Bolding mine.
Oh for god’s sake
Are we really nitpicking between name, term, and word?
This thread has jumped the shark. And I still haven’t heard one concrete suggestion for what to do even if we all agree that the TERM Karen is racist and sexist.
Very very few people really think prejudice or bias against a race is always racism (just like most people don’t call it sexism when a TV show has women getting together to complain about ‘men’). I don’t actually think the word’s meaning does go beyond prejudice + racial superiority/inferiority. It goes back to what 'ism’s are. People generally understand ‘ism’ means a world view or system.
Yes! Demeaning anyone who happens to be named “Karen” is ridiculous. A 22 year old black man can be “a Karen”.
Don’t use the term if you don’t like it. When I encounter “a Karen” I point and laugh.
I have never used any form of the Karen meme.
This thread is not about me.