BONUS MATERIAL
The Spillway is one part — one teensy mechanism of the larger racial justice movement. We are White people talking to (predominately) White people about White people and White culture (however many cultures can be isolated in the US). This is an affinity space. At The Spillway, we are proverbially cleaning our room.
Evangeline’s work and conversation is such an important reminder that after (and sometimes even during) when we clean our room, we have to clean the bathroom, the kitchen, and the living room. When White people call other White people Karens and appropriate the term from Black culture, it’s messy and misogynistic. When Black people call people “Karen” it’s connected to a current and historical practice of White women weaponizing competing victimization and our privilege to further transgress and dehumanize Black people especially.
Here Evangeline shares the historic and current use of Karens in a cross-cultural context.
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For more on this, check out these resources:
The Once and Future Karen, NPR
A Brief History of Karen, The New York Times
The Mythology of Karen, The Atlantic
The Origin of the Karen Meme, Buzzfeed Video