Culture

A Ranking Of The Racist Karens By How Much “Can I Speak To The Manager” Energy They Exude

Who is the Karen of all Karens?

by Michelle Rennex  22 June 2020
racist karen ranking

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Karens are an unavoidable part of life.

If you don’t know what a Karen is yet, congrats. You’re lucky you’ve never encountered one. For everyone else, you’d know that a Karen is basically any angry, over-dramatic, entitled, Gen-X white woman who is known for being extremely nosey and judgemental. Karens are often characterised by their love for requesting managers for tiny incidents, are quite fond of a bob cut and absolutely froth a french-tip acrylic or champagne gold minivan.

But there are two distinct types of Karens in the wild: The fairly innocent ones — who are just keen for discounts, and thrive off annoying retail staff and the feeling of being told they’re right — and then there’s the dangerous ones.

The dangerous Karens are the ones who use their middle-aged whiteness as a weapon against people of colour. We’ve seen so many of them in recent years, calling police when they don’t get their way or going out of their way to just insert themselves into situations were they aren’t wanted or needed — exuding a real “can I speak to the manger” energy, if you will.

Either way, the beauty of internet and technology is that footage of these racist Karens always finds its way online and goes viral for our viewing pleasure. This virality often ends up biting these Karens in the ass too, with doxing almost always occurring which often results in lost employment.

So here’s a ranking of all the high-profile Karens who have gotten in trouble for their racist antics, ranked by just how evil their motives were.

** It should be noted that iconic Karens, Officer Karen, who was the cop that cried over her McMuffin being late, and Kidz Bop Karen, who’s bonkers mid-traffic stop rant went viral, are not included in this list because while their videos were scary and measure way off the Karen scale, their videos were relatively harmless and not necessarily racially-motivated. **

7. San Fran Karen

Less than two weeks ago, Lisa Alexander approached Filipino man, James Juanillo, who was stencilling “Black Lives Matter” on the front of his own property in San Fransisco.

Clearly physically unable to mind her own business, like most Karens do, San Fran Karen put on a low, sweet voice as she lied about knowing the owners of the home and threatened to call the police on Juanillo for defacing private property.

As a result of the video going viral, San Fran Karen’s LaFace skin care products were dropped from a Birchbox partnership, and her partner, Robert Larkin, was fired from his job at wealth management group, Raymond James. Lisa Alexander has since apologised for her “ignorance and naivety towards racial inequalities” after receiving copious amounts of backlash and having to close her online store.

While San Fran Karen didn’t call the cops, her actions were definitely racially motivated as evident by her lie about knowing the people who owned the home. Plus, the scariest part about San Fran Karen, beyond her bone-chillingly dead looks into the camera, was that you could tell that she genuinely thought she was being so level and sweet with Juanillo, despite literally talking down to him like a child.

6. Permit Patty

Permit Patty went viral back in 2018 after threatening to report an eight-year-old black child for “illegally selling water without a permit”.

Talking to CNN, Alison Ettel explained that she was becoming increasingly frustrated as someone was “shouting outside constantly” about $2 water bottles for sale while she was trying to work from home. Ettel then decided to call 911 after the sellers refused to leave, which is when the child’s mother started to film.

When Permit Patty noticed the filming, she immediately ducked behind a wall to avoid being seen — probably aware of the ramifications that these viral videos can have. In the video, the mother can be heard saying: “You can hide all you want. The whole world gonna see you.” And the world did.

Almost instantly Permit Patty faced backlash over the overreaction, which led to her resigning from her role as CEO of the cannabis-based company, TreatWell Health. Permit Patty has since apologised for her actions and claims that she was only “pretending” call the police on the child. However, the 911 recording actually revealed that Permit Patty did in fact report the child for “not having a vendor permit”.

Actually calling the cops on a child because them selling bottled water near your house is fucking up your zen work time? Sounds pretty evil to me.

5. BBQ Becky

BBQ Becky became one of earliest viral ‘Karen’ moments, when bystander Michelle Snider recorded her 25-minute incident and uploaded it to YouTube.

In April of 2018, Jennifer Schulte called 911 to report black park-goer Kenzie Smith and his friends enjoying a nice barbecue in Lake Merritt park in Oakland, California. Upset that the family were using a charcoal grill in one of park’s designated non-charcoal grilling zones, Schulte made not one but two calls to law enforcement about the incident and even claimed that one of the men were “trespassing”.

In the first, BBQ Becky demanded the situation was “dealt with immediately” so that “coals don’t burn more children and we don’t have to pay more taxes”. A few hours later, BBQ Becky called again claiming that she needed the police to “come and help” because the family followed her out of the park.

A few months after the incident, the police released the audio of Schulte’s call where you can hear the dispatcher questioning her mental state — something that police on the scene assessed with a 5150 psychiatric hold evaluation when they arrived. They ultimately decided she was not a danger to herself or others, but did wonder why she was so worked up over the incident when she could’ve just walked away.

The funniest part of this whole thing, however, was that to get Schulte the assistance she so desperately wanted, the 911 dispatcher asked her to describe herself so that officers could find her at the park. In response BBQ Becky said “my race doesn’t matter” despite gladly and swiftly giving the race of the family barbecuing when she made her first call. Interesting, that is.

4. Key Fob Kelly

In 2018, Hilary Mueller was fired from her job when footage of her physically blocking her black neighbour from entering his St. Louis luxury apartment building went viral.

Earning the name Key Fob Kelly, Mueller continually blocked and questioned D’Arreion Toles after ignoring his polite requests for her to move aside. Throughout the video, Key Fob Kelly demands that Toles tell her what unit he lives in, while expressing that she “didn’t like” that he had his phone in her face.

After Key Fob Kelly refused to move out of the doorway, Toles edged his way past. This upset Mueller, who followed him into the lift and asked who he was “here to see”. Following Toles to his apartment, Key Fob Kelly then changed her tune to say that she just wanted to “introduce herself as a neighbour” if they lived in the same building.

Despite all this, the police still ended up knocking on D’Arreion Toles’ apartment door about 30 minutes later following a call by Mueller, but no charges were filed by either party.

Following the incident, Key Fob Kelly says she has been labeled a racist, but claimed that it’s simply not true — especially as she is legally married to a person of colour. Responding to the incident, her husband Brandon Mueller said that he was “deeply disappointed” by “that individual” and her actions, and shared that the pair had actually been estranged for over a year.

3. SoCal Karen

In the couple of weeks, 56-year-old woman, Lena Hernandez, has gone on an anti-Asian tirade throughout Torrance, California.

In one video, SoCal Karen is seen standing in a parking lot as she hurls abuse at an Asian man with his children in the car. Standing next to the mans car, Hernandez tells him: “You need to go home. Do you know how many people can’t stand you being here?”

Despite being the one to approach the man to threaten him, Hernandez said she was going to call the police when he hopped out of his car to record her number plate. Then, after putting on a poor Asian accent to mock him, SoCal Karen threatened the man by saying: “Do you know who my family is? You are so fucked.”

In another video that’s believed to have happened on the same day, SoCal Karen is seen verbally abusing a young Filipino-American woman for working out on the park steps. Just like the first video, as SoCal Karen walks away from the situation, she threatened the woman by saying that her family were “gonna fuck [her] up”.

“Get the fuck out of this world, get the fuck out of this state, and go back to whatever fucking Asian country you belong in,” Hernandez shouted at the woman. “This is not your place! This is not your home! We do not want you here.”

Since the videos started to do the rounds online, another Asian-American shared that she had actually reported Lena Hernandez last year for physically attacking her, but nothing had been done by Torrance PD. Since the surge in SoCal Karen incidents, Torrance PD have announced that they are now searching for Hernandez and all the victims.

2. Cornerstone Caroline

Back in 2018, Teresa Klein called the cops on an 9-year-old black boy, accusing him of sexually assaulting her in a Brooklyn deli.

Earning the rightful title of Cornerstone Caroline, Teresa Klein claimed, on video, that the child grabbed her behind as he walked out of the store. Security footage, however, shows that his backpack merely brushed her back as the family walked out of the crowded deli.

In the CCTV footage, witnesses of the incident can even be seen defending the child and denying the claims before Cornerstone Caroline decided to whip out her phone and dial 911. In the Facebook video, the child and his sister can be heard screaming and crying in fear as Cornerstone Caroline calls the police to report the incident.

As a result of the released footage, civil rights activist Shaun King announced that he was seeking that Teresa Klein be charged with harassment and false reporting of a crime, while Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams called the interaction a “modern-day Emmett Till moment“.

While Cornerstone Caroline was never charged, the concept that a middle-aged white woman could’ve gladly ruined an innocent 9-year-old child’s life is highly concerning.

1. Central Park Karen

Amy Cooper, otherwise known as Central Park Karen, is easily the worst of the lot.

For those who don’t know, a little under a month ago Amy Cooper called the police on Christian Cooper (not related), a black bird watcher, who politely asked Amy to leash her dog as per The Ramble park rules. But instead of just complying with his request, Amy threatened Christian by saying: “I’m going to tell [911] there’s an African-American man threatening my life.”

And so she did, with a fake voice that sounded much more distressed and exaggerated to the one she using during her conversations with Christian. Over the course of her 33-second 911 phone call, Central Park Karen made sure to repeat that Christian was an “African American man” who was “threatening” her and her dog.

After the clip was posted online by Christian’s sister, Amy Cooper ended up losing her job, her dog and the incident pushed Governor Andrew Cuomo to encourage lawmakers to make fake accusations to law enforcement a hate crime.

Imagine that, all because Amy Cooper wanted to be a Karen and thought the rules didn’t apply to her. Tough.