The “Karen” archetype has been dragged through the mud for the better part of a decade, and deservedly so. Lately, on social media, especially X (formerly Twitter), some people are trying to argue that Karens aren’t bad and we need them now more than ever.
What is a Karen?
The Karen is a white woman who has deputized herself as a kind of community police officer. She’s more than willing to interject in any situation, step in, give an opinion, complain, and—if she’s ignored—call the actual police to come wield some state violence on her behalf.
Amy Cooper, the Central Park Karen, was one of the original, when she went viral for threatening a Black man named Christian Cooper (no relation) after he asked her to put her dog on a leash. Video showed her calling the police and fabricating details to make herself seem like the victim in the situation, putting him in danger.
While there are actual people named Karen out there who mind their business, when someone is called a Karen in a derogatory way, they’re being called a busybody whiner who is probably being accused of being racist. However, overuse of the term has diluted these more serious connotations. People now will use it to describe anyone complaining about anything, which removes the term from its more meaningful origins.
Where did the phrase come from?
Initially, the word came out of the Black American community, according to the New York Times. Karen Grigsby Bates, who hosts NPR’s Code Switch podcast, did a deep dive into the term and shared that another popular term in the Jim Crow and antebellum periods was “Miss Anne.”
Bates said “Miss Anne” was code “to refer to these unreasonable white women … a woman who knew her place in society, was complicit in maintaining it, and who was at the upper end of the hierarchy. Even if she was a nice Miss Ann, she was still upholding this system that said: ‘White womanhood above all else, except white manhood.’”
Karen is the popular moniker now, with the New York Times suggesting it may harken back to a Dane Cook bit from 2005 about “the friend who nobody likes.” He named that person Karen.
But using Karen in a derogatory way crossed over into being a widespread, multicultural phenomenon in 2020, when national outrage over police killings of Black people exploded with the murder of George Floyd and several other high-profile cases, like the death of Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain. While discussing racism and violence concerning policing, conversations about the Karens policing people became more widely understood.
Famous Karens in history
Aside from Cooper, many white women got put on blast in 2020 and the ensuing years, transforming into a trope of their own and giving rise to Karen memes. While filming outrageous behavior has been around since handheld video devices were invented, the Black Lives Matter movement and the popularity of these videos around the COVID-19 lockdown made it much easier to circulate them and get people to pay attention.
Like the Karen stopping her Black co-worker from going to the bathroom, the San Francisco Karen calling the police on their neighbor for writing BLM on their own property, a gentleman Karen who threatened the cops over a wrong order, the Karens berating a Walmart worker, the Karen trying to keep a Black lifeguard out of the pool, and many, many more.
As well as this variant, Permit Patty:
Is the Karen trope misogynistic?
While outrage around Karens ties to the anti-racism movement, criticism still cropped up around the term. Some people wondered if it was an expression of misogyny. But it can be a useful term to talk about how white supremacy is expressed through white women specifically. However, white men certainly enjoy talking about Karens, which some people have pointed out is pretty hypocritical and evidence of their own misogyny. So it kind of depends on who is talking.
Why are people defending Karens now?
In the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of X and Present-elect Donald Trump’s victory, woke has been declared dead, and now Karens are being rehabilitated. As one user, @Cluffalo wrote, “There’s a vibe shift happening with Karens People are realizing that high trust societies are built by the people willing to look a little prudish in order to enforce rules and norms.”
On Nov. 22, a meme account called I Meme Therefore I Am, @ImMeme0, shared a video of a white woman lecturing another woman about having an off-leash dog on a wilderness walk.
Conservative commenter Matt Walsh also joined in to applaud the Karen, insisting that they’ve gotten too much blowback and we need more people calling the police over petty issues.
Do Karens deserve a comeback?
The example above spawning this discourse neatly sidesteps the main issue people had with Karens in 2020.
Annoying dog owners and annoying white women might bother people for similar reasons, like entitlement. But someone being too demanding about customer service issues or calling the manager is not the same thing as a white woman being racist while making it seem like they’re just upholding the law.
Redeeming the Karen is a slippery slope, and we don’t need to slide down it.
As X user @Blixberrie reminded their followers in response to the “vibe shift” convo, “minimizing” the Karen down to “an annoying lady” misses the point of the word.
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