Run in with “Karen.”

Did you run into "Karen" this weekend?

Most white women are like the karen of these stories- very few are like the ally.

Where are our white women allies?

How do you seperate the karen from the friend?

“To anyone who thinks that discussions related to race in this country are overblown, or perhaps plays with the idea that yes, what happened to George Floyd was awful, but he’s in the minority; to anyone tired of talking about racism, or tired of other people talking about it, because you’re just plain over it—please be assured racial injustice is finally getting exactly the attention it deserves. Although a white police officer doesn’t kneel on the neck of a Black man for more than nine minutes every day, I don’t know a single Black person who has not come face to face with a racist or been discriminated against because of the color of their skin. We have to prepare our children for when, not if, it happens. We write articles and children’s books about it.

Someone doesn’t always end up killed or physically hurt when being discriminated against, but someone usually ends up feeling degraded, ashamed, angry, or a little less human. Sometimes it’s a young Black girl walking into a library after school and feeling uneasy when the white librarian cuts her eyes—that’s my story. Sometimes it’s a Black teen being pulled over allegedly for driving just over the speed limit but being questioned at length—a friend’s story. Sometimes it’s a managing editor here at Daily Kos. This is her story; Be warned, it contains limited profanity. 

“So I got ‘Karened’ over the weekend. Storytime!” Jessica Sutherland, who oversees Community Content here, wrote in a Twitter thread on Wednesday. She said she was enjoying a "lazy Sunday Funday" with three activist friends on the patio of a restaurant in her hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, when “a table of three white people and their lovely dog” was seated next to them in the city's “recently reopened and revitalized” riverfront district. “The dog was poorly trained and her humans weren't limiting her bad behavior. She even ate food off of our table,” Sutherland tweeted. “Luckily, we had long been done with it, so we laughed it off, because we're dog people. But why was a plate we'd long been done with even available to the dog? ...

”Because our server clocked out and left, that's why! She didn't tell us—we'd just gotten our appetizers and second round of drinks—and she didn't tell her coworkers. We kept getting needs met by a busser and hostess, who couldn't order more booze, or our main meals for us.”

Sutherland wrote in the thread that she didn't learn the server had left until she and her friends gave up on finding her and asked for their check. "We were chill,” she said. “Most of us had worked in the [restaurant] biz, shit happens.” The manager comped the partial meal they were perfectly prepared to pay for, with credit cards in hand, and that’s “when the Karening began,” Sutherland wrote. The woman, whose name Sutherland didn't catch, began insisting that she thought the group shouldn’t have gotten a free lunch. "’You should pay for your food, since you ate it,’" the woman reportedly repeated until Sutherland acknowledged her.

Sutherland responded: "The restaurant disagrees with you."

“The Karen then blatantly stated that we, as a group (3 Black women and 1 white one) were habitual grifters, always chasing that comped check because we can't afford our fun (...),” Sutherland explained. 

“’That's quite the incorrect assumption you're making there. Enjoy your day, your dog was lovely,’ I said, before exiting the restaurant patio. My other Black friends, who hadn't heard the interaction, didn't acknowledge her. But our white friend had words for the Karen.”

Sutherland recounted her friend’s words: "’You don't know what you're talking about and you should mind your own damn business.’" Sutherland—whose old job, by the way, was to report on situations much like this one—said she couldn't hear how the offensive woman responded, but she heard “her embarrassed dining companions trying to silence her.”

Sutherland paused near the exit to dig through her purse for a cigarette and lighter; the manager returned to apologize and thank her group for being patient, and invited them to come back and give them another chance. When she mentioned she had worked in hospitality, the two realized they knew each other from before she moved out of state. "The Karen had to listen for the next 10 min as the manager and I laughed like the old friends we are," Sutherland wrote. "I hope it ate her up.”

She ultimately said she was proud of her friend “for using her white privilege” on their behalf, and that when thinking about the encounter, she is reminded about an earlier sentiment she expressed in a recent article documenting racism.

“While Black men are the people white folks claim to fear the most so they can shoot them without consequence, Black women are, to many if not most white people, only here to be of service,” she penned. “We’re not here to be treated with dignity, we’re here to give their aging, racist fathers a sponge bath while earning pennies over minimum wage. We’re mammies and maids, cooks and caregivers. 

“We’re welfare queens and whores, until election time, when we’re the workhorses white Democrats swear they couldn’t do without.”

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/6/17/2035713/--You-should-pay-for-your-food-Karen-inserts-herself-in-the-wrong-Black-woman-s-business?detail=emaildkre