Karens, explained

Brut America

She has a sassy haircut and would like to speak to the manager – or the police. Meet Karen, a popular though controversial character and meme of 2020.

Transcript

00:00I think we all know a Karen in our life who calls the manager, who has a sassy haircut,

00:06or wants some special privilege that no one else gets, and manages to get her way regardless

00:12of the outcomes for others.

00:13So what I think is useful about the Karen meme is it points to these structures of

00:39oppression that white women can call the police without fear of being intimidated or arrested

00:45for that behavior.

00:47I think that those memes allow us to have a certain traction in public discourse about

00:52that kind of behavior that wouldn't have been possible without the label of the Karen meme

00:57to provide it with a sense of importance and a sense of humor that brings it to life.

01:14A lot of these early criticisms of white women specifically, so Becky, Patty, and now the

01:21most popular being Karen, a lot of them began on Black Twitter, such that Black women were

01:26using these shorthands to point out the different ways that white women were relying on their

01:32privilege to get what they wanted without thinking about the consequences for those

01:38around them.

01:39You want to call the police on them for having a barbecue on a Sunday at the lake?

01:44Yes.

01:45So I think Karen memes can be distracting when they are about individual behavior rather

01:59than pointing to structural problems.

02:02I've seen comment sections where, for instance, commenters will call someone a Karen to get

02:07them to stop talking, and that is a more misogynistic form of using Karen.

02:13However, I've often seen Karen memes pointing out, okay, white women call the police too

02:18frequently.

02:19Okay, white women are not following mask protocols, or white women want to go get their hair cut

02:24more than they want to protect the public health.

02:28Those instances are really important social commentary that highlights the ways white

02:34women, and perhaps white folks more generally, rely on their own exceptionalism to move in

02:43the world.

02:57One of the original memes or images that called Karen the N-word was actually a form of satire

03:06created by a Canadian advertising company, and it was meant to draw dissent.

03:12It was meant to make white women feel angry that they were being maligned in some way.

03:19I think that that can happen, and I think it's important to hold space for the idea

03:25that Karen can be used to diminish women's voices in general, since I've seen it used

03:31in a number of different ways.

03:33I also think that calling it a slur deflects from the larger issues that should be brought

03:42to bear on these conversations, issues like white supremacy, issues like police violence.

03:48I would love it if in all of the Karen brouhaha, we also had some Chad or Brad or Kyle memes

04:09that drew attention also to the different ways that more people are involved in these

04:17systems of oppression.

04:19Men as a figure tend to be more universalized or seen as universal.

04:24So I wonder if a Kyle or Chad or Brad meme might allow for broader conversations to happen

04:32than even Karen memes do.

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