I appreciate the compassion embedded in this take, but I think it misses the central offense of Karens. I'm not sure who out there is using the term Karen to define any white woman who raises her voice, but in my circles, it's only ever meant a white woman who uses her whiteness in order to wield power over others.
Example: I was having coffee at a local shop that has a no tipping policy. They pay their servers a living wage, and it's part of their company ethos. There's a laminated manifesto explaining the rationale behind this on the door to the shop, and one of the points that they make is:
"The tip-based system can be discriminatory, as some customers may, consciously or subconsciously, make tipping choices based on the race, sex, or gender expression of the staff member with whom they are interacting. This dynamic is sad, but it is real."
As I sat there writing on my laptop, I witnessed a tall, thin, attractive, mid-30s white woman come in off the street just to berate the staff for this particular point on that manifesto. She spent the better part of ten minutes yelling at them for "calling [their] customers racist before they even walked in the door." It was alarming and entirely unnecessary. Like, why even come in? And why yell at the staff? They aren't responsible for the company's policies. They just work there.
No one was ignoring this woman. No one was making her feel invisible. The poor staff listened patiently and responded only with mild apologies and bewildered expressions. I wish one of them had said, "Well, hey, if you wanna tip us, no one's stopping you."
Not that this Karen would've done that. She just wanted to lord her whiteness over everyone. I was so grateful that the three people on staff that day were all white, because it would've been extra horrifying if any people of color had had to deal with this awful lady.
That's what I think of when I think of a Karen. It's bullshit like that. It's bullshit like that woman in Central Park who called the cops on a Black man who was out bird-watching and literally said that she was a white woman and the cops would believe her over him. It's not any white woman who raises her voice about anything.
