Is the“Karen” nickname benefiting racists?

Should we stop using the nickname?

Katie Anderton
3 min readJul 7, 2020

Every single day, there seems to be a new video of a hysterical white woman, making groundless charges against a black person.

Sometimes these videos surface, where a white woman is comfortably making unfounded claims. Take Lisa Alexander, who calmly threatened to call the police on a Filipino man who had written “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on his own wall.

The internet loves to laugh off these ridiculous situations, calling the women “Karen”. But where’s the real truth here? These women aren’t just memes or a stereotype. They are women who are knowingly abusing their white entitlement.

Now, we have a phenomenon, where the internet rarely tries to find out the name, job, or socio-economic background of the white woman. Instead, the video will go viral, with tonnes of comments saying “another Karen”.

Essentially, these women are not getting the same repercussions as they would if the Karen meme did not exist. That’s the truth.

Calling women Karen isn’t a new trend. It’s actually been around for years and didn’t always relate to white women.

In fact, it started on Reddit (a site notorious for misogyny). The slur had sexist undertones, and often was used against women who were a little more outspoken or particular. Think, “can I speak to the manager” type of stereotypes.

It wasn’t necessarily used to describe women who were using systematic racism to benefit them.

Within the past few months, a surge in the number of Karens out in the wild has happened. This is likely due to their entitlement being tested with face masks and society confronting methodical racism.

There are two major takeaways from this:

  1. Why is there an evident unbalanced focus on women over men? There is likely the same, if not more, cases of men doing inexcusable behaviour. Tactical sexism will always elevate women’s behaviour, especially using labelling.
  2. Why are we even using the term Karen? Let’s call it exactly what it is. Racism. Abuse of power. Entitlement. Prejudice.

While this is also a complete conspiracy theory. It’s also possible that “Karens” are intentionally hiding behind this nickname. These offending individuals are almost being protected by the name. They’ll always be known as “another Karen” rather than by their real name.

Their reputation is remaining unscathed, and their problematic ways are never punished. They’ll complain about being called “Karen” as a slur, claiming that reverse racism exists. All in all, shifting the focus from the real issues.

Karen has unequivocally become something of a euphemism. A playful stereotype that people log onto Twitter to laugh about. The reality isn’t humorous — especially when a 911 call against a black person, has proven to be lethal countless times.

Truthfully, to get these Karens to change, we have to stop using the nickname. We need to start calling them out by their real names and their actions — make other racist women AND men recognise their problematic ways.

So, rather than “this Karen is ridiculous”, let’s use stinging terms that will habituate their names until they make changes and apologies.

While they may only change for selfish fears that their name will be tainted on the internet, at least this keeps marginalised people safer.

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Katie Anderton
Katie Anderton

Written by Katie Anderton

Feminist, anti-capitalist columnist and journalist. katieanderton.com

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