As much as I find Karen’s fascinating, I do not think you meant to cry white women’s innocence of racism in this article. In fact, I very much suspect you’re right about the sexism, and I’ve been thinking this for a while.

I’ve observed that there are a lot of people who have absolutely no problem calling out the crappy behavior of those lower on the social ladder (i.e. marginalized people), than to call out such behavior in those they consider more powerful. More and more, I’m seeing white men calling this ‘Karen’ behavior out, and simply mocking such women, and I’m not comfortable with that.

When black people coined the term, shame and mockery wasn’t our “goal”. Those were the tools we used to enact consequences for racist behavior. With the men who are vilifying these women, shame and mockery is the point. They’re certainly not doing so on behalf of the black people who are these women’s victims.

Another thing which has come to the forefront with this, is the cultural appropriation of black social survival behavior, against white supremacy, being used by white people, to serve their own bigotries. This is another clear example of something something invented in black culture to serve our needs, being taken and twisted to serve the needs of white people.