Recently, the name Karen has gained notoriety online as an insult against middle-aged white women. Paired with the iconic “speak to the manager” haircut, it’s often used as a metaphor for entitlement or rude behavior according to Know Your Meme senior editor Matt Schimkowitz.
Karen Tracy and Eric Eisenberg conducted a study to explore how relative status affects people’s behaviors, which found that when someone has more power, they are more likely to engage in Karen-like actions such as calling the police on a Black man than when they have less.
Personality
Karen is one of the most beloved character archetypes in modern culture. She’s been used in movies and television shows to depict various behavior patterns associated with racism, sexism, and selfishness.
Karen-like behavior often goes undetected, yet its social dynamics play a pivotal role in shaping group dynamics and how members engage with one another. If members are naturally accommodating or incapable of driving forward progress, they may create an environment which does not promote learning or social development.
Values shape how a person reacts to situations and interacts with others. Unfortunately, these values can also become obstacles to personal growth and development. For instance, when expressiveness is associated with someone’s values, they will strive for ways to express themselves and become more vocal.
But, if someone’s values are associated with objectivity, they might prioritize being an excellent listener and controlling their emotions. When these two values seem in conflict with each other, it can be difficult for people to decide which is more important.
Many people may find dealing with depression an upsetting experience. But, it is essential to remember that it is an inevitable part of growing up and being human.
Good news is that there are steps people can take to help them combat their values. The initial step is identifying which values matter most to you and then understanding how those influences your behaviour.
You can do this by employing the Dilemma Theory. This method uses a series of questions to help you recognize how your values are shaping your behaviors and attitudes.
By having an in-depth understanding of one’s own values, one can begin to recognize how other people’s actions may negatively affect them and vice versa. This helps them avoid causing unnecessary harm by acting according to their own principles instead of listening to what other people say.
Socialization
Socialization is an essential process in human development, shaping boys and girls’ habits, skills, cognitive competencies, emotional tendencies, and normative beliefs. It plays a significant role in their habits, skills, cognitive competencies, emotional tendencies and normative beliefs. Socialization plays an integral role in human development as it forms the basis of being human.
Socialization is the process by which children acquire the skills and knowledge needed to participate in their societies. It also involves genetic predispositions as well as social learning processes such as imitation and collaborative learning (Hill et al. 2009; Meltzoff 2007).
Societal structure and values play a major role in shaping what type of socialization takes place for children. Poor families tend to emphasize obedience and conformity when raising their kids, while wealthy households encourage judgment and creativity.
These social influences also shape how individuals act in the real world. Studies have demonstrated that students raised with racial discrimination tend to have low expectations for other minorities and teachers who are affected by racism often treat these students less favorably than non-racist ones do.
Other social influences include religion. Institutions such as synagogues, temples and churches provide important opportunities for socialization among their members. They teach about the material culture of their religion and often tie in ceremonies that mark major life milestones or roles like marriage or birth.
One of the primary ways children learn about social expectations is through modeling and imitation, where they copy adult actions. For instance, if a child observes her mother or father holding a baby in their arms, they are likely to mimic those gestures.
Similar to how children observe their parents or siblings playing a game together, they will imitate their actions. This type of socialization teaches children what is expected of them in certain scenarios and allows them to decide whether they want to join in on the fun.
Finally, socialization is not a single event but an ongoing series of interactions that take place throughout a person’s lifetime. It involves both secondary and primary socialization which occurs at home and school, continuing into adulthood. Anticipatory socialization – occurring before someone takes on a new role – also forms part of this process.
Relationships
Recently, we’ve seen an uptick in videos and incidents featuring middle-aged white women displaying anger or antipathy towards authority figures. This trend began in Central Park but has now spread to restaurants, airports, big-box stores, even social media platforms like Twitter US:Twitter, Facebook US:FB and Instagram.
In today’s consumer economy, which Nelson D. Schwartz (2020) refers to as ‘The Velvet Rope Economy’, Karen-like behavior signals that middle class white people feel their power, security and access eroding away. We often associate Karens with ‘incels’, MAGA-apparel wearing men and ‘gammons’ in British popular culture – all representing those who have lost their privilege and are left dealing with an entirely different precarious reality.
The origins of the ‘Karen’ phenomenon remain uncertain, but it has been associated with similar themes as the ‘Becky’ meme. Both names indicate behaviors rooted in entitlement, privilege and/or rage; however social commentators note that Karens appear more frequently than Kens in viral video footage shared on Twitter, Facebook US:FB and Instagram.
Karen-like behavior can be explained by several relationships. One major one is Karen’s connection to the white patriarchy in her world, which has created a false perception that cis-gendered women need protection and thus lead to ‘white powder dynamics’ such as Karen who simultaneously experiences both victimization and benefitting from it (Attiah, 2020; Grisgby Bates, 2020).
Another relationship which may influence her behavior is her family. She may have grown up with a father who was harsh in his treatment of her and her siblings, or suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts in early life – all of which could have contributed to the way Karen behaved in Double Feature.
Identity
The Karen meme, a trending internet phenomenon characterized by middle-aged white women calling the police on Black people or demanding they see a manager for minor infractions, is fuelled by an ongoing wave of racial injustice. These videos and comments serve as reminders of these tensions which remain prevalent in our country despite recent furloughs and layoffs of millions of American workers as well as the return of Black Lives Matter activism.
Karen-like behavior can easily be misconstrued as evidence of class privilege, especially given that women still often don’t earn more than men in the workplace (Schimkowitz, 2018). Furthermore, many Karen-like actions could be linked to an ongoing myth about female hysteria which continues to be reinforced by media and society alike.
These social dynamics are part of an enduring cultural construction that values white femininity and presumed frailty, making it difficult to speak out against racism (Schimkowitz, 2019). Damon Young observes: “White fragility and racial innocence are norms rooted in centuries-old sex-based norms.” In America today, these norms remain pervasive and can be used as a way to highlight recurring patterns in how white people perform racism (Attiah, 2020).
Karen serves to reinforce and valorize ‘whiteness’ as the normative identity, devaluing Blackness, Muslimness and Indianness (Hank Stuever, 2020). This ambivalence is further compounded by its frequent association with middle-aged white women – often described by Karen – whom many historians view with disdain due to ‘patrimonial/postfeminist distaste for midlife narcissism.
Therefore, it’s often easier to blame white women who are perceived as rude or aggressive than address the systemic racial injustice and white privilege that underlies this behavior. After watching video of Amy Cooper calling the police on Christian Cooper for asking her dog to be muzzled in Central Park, people started linking this behavior to an overall issue with race relations and violence that can occur when people fear challenging established order.
