McKnight said questions on social media about Emanuele’s mental health do not negate the racist nature of the incident. Some people say memes of white women confronting people of color provide a handle on behaviors born of racist entitlement, while others point to misogyny, economic disenfranchisement, and even mental-health issues. To read the comments of some white people now making an excuse or defense for this behavior is alarming and gets us to the real problem of this systemic situation.” “This ‘Karen’ went on a rant for more than 4 minutes repeatedly yelling this word and other discouraging names while following a Black woman. “We know Bayonne has a history of racist behavior and we can no longer sit by and make excuses for residents in any New Jersey town to ever be allowed to call someone the N-word,” she added. I thank her for being the strong Black woman that she is to remain calm and reserved during the entire ordeal.” I put myself in Tameka’s shoes and I know it had to take a lot of restraint for her to endure what she went through today. “This behavior is becoming so common now that we simply refer to these racist people as ‘Karen’ and let it go,” she said. New Jersey Assemblywoman Angela McKnight (D., Hudson) noted the ubiquity and near-normalization of these memes. Emanuele had moved from Tennessee to New Jersey in December. “An immigrant couple from China released a video in April of a man banging on their front door, yelling racial slurs, and screaming, ‘You brought COVID-19.’ ”Īnd in Bayonne, N.J., police arrested 60-year-old Claudia Emanuele for intimidation and harassment after she followed 40-year-old Tameka Bordeaux, and was filmed shouting racial epithets at her. In a heartbreaking detail from that night, one of the couple’s children reportedly asked his mother: “Mommy, did I do this because I watch too much iPad and he’s here to punish me?” The man hollered: “I said it’s your neighbor, open the door!. Last month, Huang Zhu and Ying Huang, immigrants from China living in San Jose, released a video of a man banging on their front door, yelling racial slurs, and screaming, “You brought COVID-19.” The couple said the man scared their 6-year-old twins, and knocked on their door at least 100 times. She also allegedly hurled the Whopper at the employee. Restaurant after she reportedly became angry over the thickness of the tomato in her bun.
In the latest such case this month, a 77-year-old woman, a resident of a retirement community in Wildwood, Fla., was charged with launching a racial tirade against a worker at a Burger King So regular and unsurprising, in fact, that many of these videos no longer go viral. If anything, they have become a depressingly regular occurrence. But such “Karen” incidents have not gone away.