If you're laughing at @karensgoingwild on IG, I will add this layer. If you're still processing them as individual women - “look at this one!”/”can you believe that one?” - then you're not registering what 10+ years of social media could be teaching you. This isn't individual women. This is very much American culture. It is a norm. It's what POC deal with throughout the day most days. Even in quarantine if you have to leave the house so your pup can take a potty break. It is non-stop.
And it's deadly. Those screaming, cheekily nicknamed "Karens" are really entitled, privileged white women in America (and elsewhere) whose unchecked ire gets people fired, beaten and killed. CONSTANTLY. All. Of. The. Time. Since this experiment started. (Then add the irony of the stereotype of the "angry Black woman" that costs jobs, relationships and peace.)
So it's not really funny to me, wild as all of it is; it's also upsetting. All of those videos...piled atop of one another...screaming at police, cursing and striking them, hitting workers doing their jobs, calling people all manner of racial epithets... It is the targets of their non-stop hate that suffer the consequences so regularly, even when the behavior is filmed. Add that Black Americans are shot with hands in the air for being a threat, but these actual assailants are being called "ma'am" and being soothed for their agitation.
And when there is a moment of consequence for the actual perpetrator...? The tears, the rage, the FB outcry, the explanations, the succor, the support. They remain the beneficiaries of a cultural empathy, of which their victims enjoy none. Accountability looks like oppression when you have never, ever had anyone rein you in. When an entire socio-cultural and legal system exists to affirm your whims and bad days.
So please don't tune into the Karen-fests to have a laugh and move on, or to pat yourself on the back with relief. Please be incredibly mindful of how deeply that entitlement permeates and runs. And consider replacing the "they" with an "us" when discussing it. Consider that enjoying the benefits of all of that privilege is part of the same cultural reality. And take one moment today to dismantle it. Take that moment, even though culture trains you to, instead, push back hard against a post like this, say the use of the word “white” is itself racist, center yourself in your own perceived innocence, ignore the cultural reality and commentary, invoke addiction and mental illness and the need for their care of the protection of their victims from their pathology… Consider, at minimum, quieting the urge to quiet this conversation.
I'll be stretching my arms out to make it down the sidewalk without a non-mask wearing, angry woman trying to force her way past me without yielding space, yelling at me to "get over" myself, or "get a grip" or "f-off." And that was just last week.
Remember not to Columbus oppression. Just because it’s the first time you’ve seen it, en masse, doesn’t mean it only recently resurged or got worse. What you’re experiencing is the inevitable, horrific and necessary result of technology, specifically social media and cell phone cameras. You now can’t avoid, much less question, much less vehemently deny, what you’ve been told your whole life is a reality of our country. And using that same technology, you can fix it.