Visuals of Karens exploiting their privilege when things don’t go their way have become Internet shorthand for a particular kind of racial violence white women have instigated for centuries https://t.co/kA8VDYe4TE
BY CADY LANG
UPDATED: JULY 6, 2020 4:11 PM EDT | ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: JUNE 25, 2020 12:53 PM EDT
When you look up the hashtag #Karen on Instagram, a search that yields over 773,000 posts, the featured image on the page is a screenshot of a white woman staring intensely into the camera, pursing her lips into a smile as she touches a finger to her chin, a movement that’s at once condescending and cloying.
The woman’s name is Lisa Alexander, but on the Internet, she’s most recognized as the “San Francisco Karen,” after a clip went viral of her last week, in which she demands to know if James Juanillo, who was stenciling “Black Lives Matter” in chalk on the front of his own home, was defacing private property. …
The video of Alexander is one of a myriad of other videos, images and memes that have emerged in the last few months of “Karens,” a slang term for middle-aged white women (which seems to have stemmed from the popular “Can I speak to a manager?” meme,) who have become infamous online for their shameless displays of entitlement, privilege, and racism — and their tendency to call the police when they don’t get what they want.
Etcetera etcetera …
I suspect white women are pretty clueless about this kind of racist anti-white women backstabbing by women of other races who want to take their men.
BY CADY LANG