She’s the woman you love to hate, the entitled busybody who doesn’t hesitate to use her racial and class privilege to get her way. Sometimes unhinged, sometimes cold as ice, “Karens” have become a fixture in our culture.
They’ve always been there, of course, though we didn’t really start calling them out until 2020 — “The Year of Karen,” according to The Guardian. Unfortunately, it looks like they’re here to stay.
So, without further ado, here’s our list of the five Karens who annoyed Atlanta Black Star readers the most:
5. Not in my backyard! San Diego Karen calls the cops on Black woman feeding the homeless
Shirley Raines is the type of person you wish you could be. She leads a nonprofit called Beauty 2 The Streetz, which provides essential services to underserved communities on the West Coast. She regularly hosts events to feed unsheltered individuals in San Diego and also does their hair, provides them with makeup and other hygienic services.
Raines has plenty of admirers, with more than 5.5 million followers on TikTok. But back in June, she encountered an unnamed, red-haired Karen objecting to a “feed the homeless event” held on a public street near the woman’s house. Raines shared the encounter on TikTok.
“Girl, why you don’t want them people to eat? Why you so miserable?” Raines asked the woman.
The woman proceeded to call the cops.
Fortunately, the officers who responded were having none of this Karen.
“As far as I’m concerned, you have just as much right as anyone else to be here,” one officer told Raines.
“We’re gonna leave. You guys keep doing whatever you’re doing,” his partner said.
4. “I Don’t Like N—–s on my property”: Racist Karen makes it like its 1950s Mississippi
This racist Karen would be wise to order some soap to wash her filthy mouth out with the next time she hits up Amazon. Oh wait, that won’t happen because she’s probably banned from life after an Amazon van driver recorded her profane, racist tirade.
The woman was set off when the driver wouldn’t give her the perfume she ordered because she didn’t have the right one-time passcode. After screaming in the driver’s face and calling him a “scumbag piece of s–t,” this blond older Karen let him know how she really felt as she stormed inside her home.
“Get off my f*****g property now because I don’t like n—ers on my property,” she said, walking away.
3. Gun-toting Karen loses her job after threatening daughter’s boss
A Georgia woman learned there are consequences to acting the fool after she confronted her daughter’s boss with a gun at her side.
The video, posted on the shop’s social media pages, shows the angry mother approaching the counter at FRIO Rolled Ice Cream shop in Covington, Georgia, demanding that her daughter’s boss, Alicia Sanders, sign a work-study form before launching into a tirade.
Sanders told the mother, Debra Johnson, she’d sign the form, but the woman wasn’t satisfied.
“I don’t trust you,” Johnson retorts. “You can’t even face my daughter and fire her in person. You couldn’t even face her. You didn’t have the balls to face her and tell her you were firing her ’cause you were chickensh—t.”
She went on to call Sanders a “passive-aggressive b—ch” and a “bully” before one of her daughters pulled her away.
@friorolledicecream #debrakajiwarajohnson #fyp #trending #foryou #madisongapolice #waltoncountydfcs #madisongapolice #newtoncountypolice #socialworker #chinohills ♬ original sound – FRIO Rolled Ice Cream
Sanders said she fired Johnson’s daughter three days before the confrontation “after receiving quite a few disrespectful text messages where I now believe to be from her mother.”
The video led to Johnson being dismissed from her job.
“She’s upset now because everybody now knows her for who she is,” Sanders said in a subsequent video.
2. Punch-drunk Karen: Verbal confrontation gets physical in Florida parking lot
OK, so some people just plain suck. Take this Florida Karen, whom we first encounter parking illegally in a handicapped spot. Another woman confronts her about it, and the sparks start to fly.
A West Palm Beach content creator filmed the “old lady beef” in a Publix parking lot.
“You’re going to hell! You’re going to hell!” said the woman, responding to the parking lot scofflaw. “You started it, and your kids are too. Thank you. You made my day. At least I’m not dressed like a slut.”
Parking lot Karen, seeing she was being recorded, said, “Put it on YouTube!”
She soon changed her mind, getting in the man’s face and demanding he delete the footage. He refused, and she started swinging.
“Lady, are you crazy?” the man asked, still filming.
“F***ing erase that, or I’ll punch the f*** out of you!” she threatened, coming toward the man aggressively.
“Hey, lady, you’re crazy!” he says, the woman putting him back on his heels.
She prepares to deck him, but her wild punch catches so much air it causes her to tumble to the ground in an embarrassing fashion.
She then struggles to her feet and threatens to call the police.
“Man, she went all in, two fights in two minutes. Some Karens never learn,” one user wrote.
1. Finger-cutting Karen loses it when Black man calls her Karen
No better way to convince people you’re not a Karen than to try to cut off someone’s fingers.
That’s what happened at a Florida (sensing a pattern here?) airport when a middle-aged white woman lost her cool after a Black man refused to apologize for calling her a Karen.
The video, posted to TikTok May under the title “Who is this Karen?” begins in the middle of a heated argument between the unidentified man and a white woman who is in the man’s personal space. Much of the dialogue is unclear, but things escalate when the man finally tells her, “Because you’re being a freaking racist, and you’re discriminating as soon as I sat down!”
From there, he tells her repeatedly to “Get out of my face” while also accusing the woman of threatening to chop his fingers unless he got up and switched seats in the waiting area.
Other passengers intervened, trying to get the woman to move to another seat. She refuses, claiming the man “threatened my son’s life,” which he denied.
She continues to try to engage the man until officers finally arrive. Witnesses to the disturbance spoke up for the man, telling the officers he did nothing wrong and the woman was finally escorted away.
