Is “Karen” Racist?

Aside from all of the recent xenophobic actions towards Asian people, the Internet started to also focus on the rising issue of whether calling a Caucasian woman “Karen” is an equivalent term to the racist N-word. Karen, a common name for women in English especially in the West, is now used as a stereotype that represents an entitled and often racist Caucasian woman who often complain too much about everything, such as “calling the manager on waiters who speak ‘foreign’ languages with each other,” and “crossing the road to avoid certain people from certain backgrounds.”

This debate started on the social media platform Twitter, when an account called “Friends of Journalism” tweeted a timed poll on their page asking if Karen was racist, due to its sexist and racist intentions, and whether it should be banned on Twitter as it is an equivalent to the N-word. This caused a feud between Twitter users and is now debated all over social media. Many argue that though Karen has sexist and racist intentions, it cannot be used to compare with the N-word. In fact, many argue that no word can be equivalent to the “centuries of violent, systematic racism behind” the N-word, and especially not the word that only targets a small group of Caucasian women who have “never faced such prejudice before.”

However, many professional journalists jumped onto this topic and claimed that this word indeed is sexist, ageist, and classist as the word suggests a housewife in their 40s in the suburbans and is based on gender and class prejudice.

While the word has developed into a sexist and anti-feminist term used to target a single group in modern societies in the West, names like Susan, Karen, and Caroline are also simply used to describe the not too rich, not too poor Caucasian women who live regular lives, just like the names Joe and Bob used to depict ordinary men in the West.

Now, “Karen” is being used heavily on the Internet as memes and parodies, similar to the “OK Boomer” phase.

Do you think Karen is an equivalent to the N-word? Comment your thoughts down below!