Is Karen considered a racial slur?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I hate the term Karen, but the way the word "entitled" has come to be used bothers me more. The connotation of that word is negative, usually used when someone thinks they deserve special privileges or treatment for no reason. Acting as of you are deserving of special treatment is entitled and annoying.

Asking for the food you ordered, for basic rules to be observed (like quiet hours or no smoking at a hotel), or to not have someone screaming in your face is not entitled.

It's funny to me that people hate Karens who complain about rules that apply to everyone being broken. Isn't it more entitled to think the rules don't apply to you?

The lording over people is the entitlement bit. You have designated yourself hall monitor to tell others what to do.

Doesn't that depend on the situation? If you are in a hotel with your kids trying to sleep and the person next to you is partying loudly at 3 a.m., you actually are entitled to quiet, and the people partying are not. If you ask for quiet, either directly or by calling the front desk, does that make you a Karen?

You can ask them nicely to be quieter or call the front desk and nicely ask them to help.

That goes for all skin tones and genders.

If someone is keeping me awake until 3am because of their loud partying at a hotel that I am also paying to stay it, I will not be nice.

Perfect example of a Karen. We don’t know your age, gender, or race. Just your attitude and self-professed likely behavior.

This is a perfect example. If the people in the hotel are so loud that they’re keeping you up at 3 am, you need to be sweet and not offensive when kindly asking them to keep it down, or you’re a Karen. Perfect.

You will get getter results by not being an a-hole. Whether you are a man or a woman.

When do you get better results by confronting a-holes at all? People partying at 3am aren't going to do the right thing just because they were asked nicely. Let security handle it.

NP. Exactly. Someone who is being super loud in a hotel at 3 am is an a-hat. Asking them to stop is not being a Karen and they are not entitled to special treatment or sweetness.
Just be really nice to those poor people at the front desk who have to deal with this a-hats.

[Anonymous]

What if we replaced Karen with a Debbie. Can we do that?

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What about Amy Cooper? When the media called her a Karen, was that sexism or simply calling out abusive behavior by a wealthy white woman using her privilege to inflict injury on an innocent POC?

Why didn’t they just call her by her real name and call out the behavior?

This. There was no reason to bring her gender into it... unless, of course, your goal is also to put down women in general.

And of course you know very well that Karen now goes waaaaayyyy beyond Amy Cooper. It's used to any older, white woman who isn't being as submissive as you want her to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What if we replaced Karen with a Debbie. Can we do that?

What if it were replaced with Shaniqua or Consuela?

[Anonymous]

Call out the behavior. Call Amy Cooper a racist and call Elon Musk as a$$hat.

Why isn't calling Amy Cooper a racist enough? Because apparently some of you also want to make this about her gender.

As we see every day with Karen, these other facets like race and gender quickly come to the fore.

Now the racist aspect of Karen isn't even the most important thing about her. Instead, term Karen is used to stomp down any woman who isn't as submissive as you want her to be.

For similar reasons, I'm not a fan of the moderator's suggestion to call obnoxious idiots "Elons." Yes, Elon Musk is a huge a$$hat. And yes, white males have historically had more privilege than anybody else on the planet. But don't make it about his gender, instead just call Elon an a$$hat.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yes. It is directed at one race in particular.

+1. This is an awful slur that is for some reason tolerated. I appreciate that teacher shutting it down.

This is a bit dramatic, and honestly exactly the reason people use it to describe a certain kind of person. It's on the level of calling someone a busy body. Calling it a slur is disrespectful to the experience of people who actually get slurs lobbed at them, and is typical centering behavior of exactly the kind of person who gets called a Karen.

I view “Karen” as a way to silence women. Particularly middle aged, white women. So maybe you don’t think it’s a slur, but I do.

Also, women right here on this website have expressed fear that speaking up about anything will get them labeled a “Karen”. It’s not ok to silence women in this way. Use your words if you think someone is misbehaving. Using a slur like “Karen” is frankly just lazy and dumb.

Karen is a word 🙄 It's not actually hurting you.

Following your logic the "n" word is just a word too, it's not hurting anyone. You are a joke.

There's a difference. Nobody calls their child the N word, but they may call their daughters Karen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What if we replaced Karen with a Debbie. Can we do that?

I don’t see any long threads about Debbie Downer. This is all about White Feelings.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Yes. It is directed at one race in particular.

+1. This is an awful slur that is for some reason tolerated. I appreciate that teacher shutting it down.

This is a bit dramatic, and honestly exactly the reason people use it to describe a certain kind of person. It's on the level of calling someone a busy body. Calling it a slur is disrespectful to the experience of people who actually get slurs lobbed at them, and is typical centering behavior of exactly the kind of person who gets called a Karen.

I view “Karen” as a way to silence women. Particularly middle aged, white women. So maybe you don’t think it’s a slur, but I do.

Also, women right here on this website have expressed fear that speaking up about anything will get them labeled a “Karen”. It’s not ok to silence women in this way. Use your words if you think someone is misbehaving. Using a slur like “Karen” is frankly just lazy and dumb.

Karen is a word 🙄 It's not actually hurting you.

Following your logic the "n" word is just a word too, it's not hurting anyone. You are a joke.

There's a difference. Nobody calls their child the N word, but they may call their daughters Karen.

DP. Don't be deliberately obtuse.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:It’s neither sexist or racist. It describes a group that sets themselves apart from other white women by their horrible behavior.

There’s a term used to describe white women, just being white women, but it’s not Karen.

Absolutely wrong. It’s used to shut up an older white woman who you don’t think has any right to stand up for herself.

Or a younger woman who shouts for you to slow down as you drive 50mph on a city street past playing kids. https://www.tiktok.com/@i...71?lang=en <<— hilarious comedian btw

Karen is deeply misogynistic, ageist and racist. It’s part and parcel of the same effort to tell older white women they can’t dress in beige, file their nails into almonds, or buy Scandia furniture. It comes from a place of misogyny and control and it’s very ugly.

What are you talking about? Honest question. I am 47 and like beige, almond-shaped nails and Scandia furniture. Besides making me into a stereotype, what is wrong with that?

[Anonymous]

Calling someone a “Karen” is not racist but shows one’s limited vocabulary and imagination. It is an effort to apply one term to people who behave badly or do something one does not like. My neighbor is irascible. Rather than referring to her as a Karen, I simply said she is irascible.

If one cannot develop skills to snark properly, one is as hopeless as those who are limited to the silly appellation of Karen.

[Anonymous]

The word is here to stay. It is used to describe any woman who is acting in a bossy and entitled way, regardless of race. I am a white middle aged man and I used it recently to describe a woman, who happens to be black, who treated the staff rudely at a Potbelly. Example: “you will get your sandwich in a minute and please stop being such a Karen.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't find it racist because as a PP stated, racism implies a power differential and white women benefit from white supremacy so you can't really be racist against them in a meaningful way.

BUT it is definitely sexist. Ask yourself why we need a special word for a woman being racist? Why can't we just call her "racist" or "entitled" or whatever it is you want to say about her behavior?

Another question. We don't have a special word for a man being racist, right? I've never heard one. That's interesting because while white women can definitely be racist and perpetuate white supremacy, I would not say that, historically, white women are the source and primary beneficiaries of white supremacy. Have they benefitted? Yes. But white supremacy is inherently misogynist and it's weird to have a special word to blame white women for it when obviously white men have perpetrated far more violence against people of color, and have benefited more (especially monetarily but in pretty much every way) than white women.

It’s interesting that now that racism against white people is both acceptable and encouraged people are trying to change the definition to claim that it’s “not really racism”

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:What about Amy Cooper? When the media called her a Karen, was that sexism or simply calling out abusive behavior by a wealthy white woman using her privilege to inflict injury on an innocent POC?

Amy Cooper is a racist, full stop. No need to resort to a slur about her gender etc.

Actually there was more to that story, Bari Weiss did a follow-up. She didn’t defend her, but it’s not that simple.

Yeah, not nearly as cut and dried as the click bait media wanted to portray it.

People talk about power differentials; Amy Cooper lost her job and this incident basically ruined her life. The guy involved was just given a National Geographic show on bird watching. Who hs the power here?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s neither sexist or racist. It describes a group that sets themselves apart from other white women by their horrible behavior.

There’s a term used to describe white women, just being white women, but it’s not Karen.

Absolutely wrong. It’s used to shut up an older white woman who you don’t think has any right to stand up for herself.

Or a younger woman who shouts for you to slow down as you drive 50mph on a city street past playing kids. https://www.tiktok.com/@i...71?lang=en <<— hilarious comedian btw

Karen is deeply misogynistic, ageist and racist. It’s part and parcel of the same effort to tell older white women they can’t dress in beige, file their nails into almonds, or buy Scandia furniture. It comes from a place of misogyny and control and it’s very ugly.

What are you talking about? Honest question. I am 47 and like beige, almond-shaped nails and Scandia furniture. Besides making me into a stereotype, what is wrong with that?

Misogynists are telling women they can’t buy Scandia furniture? What in the world? This seems oddly specific.

[Anonymous]

Yes, this new idea that any kind of group-based animosity can be justified by framing it as "punching up" is really scary.