Read on Twitter
When I saw the Karen discourse take place I didn’t say anything, because I was waiting to see which of those people so upset by that term would speak up about videos like this. I want to know how much they care about a very common phenomenon. https://twitter.com/marclamonthill/status/1265026029808160771
The first Karen I ever heard of turned out to be called Carolyn. She lied that a black boy made eyes at her and he was killed in a fashion so horrifying that I still about the details of his death. His name of course was Emmett Till. https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/27/emmett-till-book-carolyn-bryant-confession
Karen - sorry, Carolyn - confessed over sixty years later that Till had done nothing to her. Sixty years and countless destroyed lives later. And when this Karen discourse started up, I watched carefully for mention of Till’s name. For the most part, he was erased again.
You cannot understand the Karen discourse without Till. It is not a name I use but it is an archetype I understand. I saw the same distortion happen to the word intersectionality and I wonder how long we are going to have to keep sanitising our language like this.
The video at the top of this thread is terrifying and it is a vivid illustration of the phenomenon in this article: https://www.google.de/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/08/how-white-women-use-strategic-tears-to-avoid-accountability
Carolyn Bryant has countless descendants, not in blood but in spirit, and they behave exactly like the woman in the video at the top of this thread. I just want more people to know her name on here, because she is one of the quietly vicious ancestors of this present horror. /end
