'Deconstructing Karen,' An Open Honest Discourse On Race In America; But I'm Still Not Safe From 'Karen'
"'Even in 2024, I am painfully aware that my life or death as a Black man in America can hinge on the tears and breath of a 'Karen.'"
By John W. Fountain
I STUMBLED UPON “Deconstructing Karen” early one morning last week and found myself awakened by a conversation on race, the likes of which I have rarely been privy to in my more than six decades of living in this Black male skin.
It was a slumberous 3 a.m., but I was soon wide awake, absorbing, taking notes, captivated. I gasped at the documentary’s honesty and bluntness. I rewound repeatedly while stabbing the keys of my Android to record those golden nuggets I found at the roundtable dinner discussion of mostly white women led by two women of color—one African American, the other Indian-American, the daughter of immigrants.
I was startled by the apparent transparency of all of the women, by their willingness to engage—with cameras rolling—in a sometimes terse and emotional discussion about the elephant in America’s room: Racism.
I was also disturbed by the uncloaking of the underbelly racism’s perpetuation and its sinister, even subconscious systemic operation within white women, as the documentary purports.
“Deconstructing Karen,” according to the documentary’s website, is the brainchild of Regina Jackson and Saira Rao who “launched RACE2DINNER—a movement to inspire white women to confront themselves and to acknowledge their own racism and complicity in white supremacy.” Jackson and Rao also coauthored the book, “White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism And How To Do Better,” published in 2022.
The website teaser about the documentary film reads:
“The crystal is polished. The china is pristine. The candles are lit. And - the nice white lady guests are about to be served some cold, hard truths.”
The title refers to the term “Karen,” which in recent years has become a label assigned typically by someone Black to a white woman who publicly exhibits certain behaviors. According to dictionary.com, “‘Karen’ is a pejorative slang term for an obnoxious, angry, entitled, and often racist middle-aged white woman who uses her privilege to get her way or police other people’s behaviors.” The term, according to at least one source, is credited largely to Black twitter.
“In 2020, the slang insult, Karen, went from an internet meme to a cultural touchstone of the year,” reads an article on Dictionary.com. “By July, Karen had logged over two million views on our site following a series of viral videos showing white women, popularly labeled Karens, flouting pandemic safety regulations or calling the police on Black people.
“One of the most telling signs of the ascendancy of this slang term came on July 16, when Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, a Karen after the secretary called the mayor ‘derelict’ for her response to protests in her city.”
OK, so back to “Deconstructing Karen.”
AS A BLACK MAN in America, watching the documentary was like hearing a confessional of my accusers many years after being falsely charged, convicted and sentenced for something of which I have always maintained my innocence, but which my Black skin and my gender as male—and no other single factor—made me prime suspect and guilty. Frankly, the documentary ought to be must-watch television for every American household (just one writer’s opinion).
As the television flickered into the morning night, I began to see more clearly, as if looking through a spotless glass and being allowed to gaze into the lens through which I am often viewed in white America. It was also further proof that racism in America persists, even 121 years since W.E.B. DuBois penned in “The Souls of Black Folk”:
“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.”
Some of what was unveiled in the 1 hour 15-minute documentary I had always suspected. Some of it I have encountered in dealings in white America throughout my life with white female teachers, fellow students, work colleagues.
In some ways, the documentary was difficult to watch. It stirred old hurts and memories, like the time a Chicago Tribune editor, a middle-age white woman, who felt compelled to confess to me that she was “afraid” of me. Not because of anything I had ever said or done, but because I had printed a sign that I hung in my cubicle. The sign read, “Never Internalize Their Disrespect.”
Confused over her confession of fear of me, I replied, “But Barb, I’ve never said a cross word to you. I’ve never even raised my voice.”
“I know,” she said. “I was intimidated by your silence.”
I was deeply hurt by her perceived weaponization of my mere existence and presence in the Tribune newsroom. By the fact that a white woman could—and still can—at any time in my life accuse me of harm, or rape, or simply say that she is frightened by me. White women can report me to the HR police over minutia. Suddenly melt into tears or erupt into a rage, and by doing so threaten my life. Indeed they wield a weapon that throughout the history of America has been used to lynch Black men and justify mass murder and the torching wholesale of Black communities.
That fact is not lost in “Deconstructing Karen,” which provides a brief though no less sordid history of the role white women have played in lynchings and other heinous crimes inflicted upon the souls of Black folk, particularly Black men.
The documentary’s website, under a tab marked, Herstory, asserts: “Becky and Karen aren’t new characters in the story of Race in America. Below is an incomplete and ever-developing history of Becky’s and Karen’s - women quick to blame the easy scapegoat: black men.”
That cited history includes lynchings of Black men from 1876 to the Tulsa, Oklahoma Massacre in 1921, to the murder of Emmett Till in 1955, to the story of Christian Cooper, a Black man who in 2020 was birdwatching in New York City’s Central Park when he politely asked a white woman to leash her dog and she, in turn, called police, saying, there was an “African-American man” threatening her.
I have lived long enough to know that kind of threat posed by white women in particular can easily cost me my life and freedom.
And I at least take some solace in knowing that Regina Jackson and Saira Rao are trying to make America better, safer, a more perfect union for us all with their admirable work. Among the quotes I wrote down while watching the documentary for later reflection:
“Colorblindness is white supremacy.”
“You walk through the world with a different experience because you are a white woman.”
“What is the one thing that white women feel the desperate need to be more than anything else? To be nice.”
“Change requires pain.”
“You cannot f--k yourself out of racism.”
“How many of you would be willing to trade places in this society with a black person?”
“When your skin is seen as a weapon, you're never unarmed.”
“When a white woman starts crying, what happens? All the attention goes to her.”
“Racism is the elephant in every room in white America.”
“Why are your feelings more important than the violence of our lives?”
“What have the good white people been doing for the past 450 years? Because nothing has changed.”
“White liberal women are the most dangerous because we think we’re so good that we can’t be part of the problem.”
The Possibility of Hope
THE ONE FLAW—AND it is not so much a flaw as it is a blind spot, in my humble opinion—is that by making the assertion that essentially all white women are racist, it makes a sweeping generalization, the kind of which have been made about me as a Black man. It is an absolute that I am not willing to accept, despite the not insignificant number of examples and historical accounts of the lethality of encountering a Karen. Truth is, I have known white women from whom I detected or experienced no Karenness. I must also admit to having been Karened by more than one Black woman in my time.
I cannot indict all white women, even as I acknowledge the potential immeasurable value of this discourse to us all sparked by the courageous work of Jackson and Rao.
As I watched the documentary, I was keenly aware that there likely is fierce opposition to the film, to the methodology and assertions of the creators, and to the uncomfortable topic of discussion. But how can we ever hope things will get better unless we first admit that there is a problem?
Unless we are willing to admit that sometimes that problem is us. Willing to engage in open and honest discourse rather than burying our heads in the sand. To admit that racism in America isn’t just going to go away. And that even in 2024, my life or death as a Black man in America can hinge on the tears and breath of a Karen.
That fact was as glaring to me as the light of my television and the possibility of hope, as I lay in bed, still hours before sunrise.
Email: Author@johnwfountain.com
