Yesterday, I tweeted a short interaction with my daughter in which she asked me what a “Karen” is.

My response was “a mean old white lady.”

Some were quick to point out that I shouldn’t perpetuate stereotypes. I deleted the tweet because I was afraid I had gone too far. 1/5

Then I realized this was a teachable moment. Instead of leaving it at “mean old white lady,” I helped her understand why Karen has come to represent what it has. And how, no, we shouldn’t judge people by the way they look, and that we should always reflect on our assumptions. 2/5

And then I brought it back to the circumstances under which the name Karen came to represent what it has in our culture. 3/5

So. Thank you, because it helped me explain the origin of Karen’s association with privilege and bias. And hopefully made my daughter more aware of her privilege and bias, and how it affects everything she does. 4/5

(I also said no one named #Karen is
necessarily any of the things the name now now unwittingly represents.) 5/5