How the Karen Meme Benefits the Right

Uncool, middle-aged white women are Democrats’ best hope for unseating Trump. Why does the online left hate them so much?

I am late to the Karens, which probably makes me Karen-ish — that is, white, middle class, middle-aged, female, college-educated, from Midwestern suburbia, and too distracted to track what’s trending on Twitter. So, when a video was retweeted into my feed last week calling an obnoxious, mask-defying white woman a “Karen,” I asked whether there might not be some actual Karens who did not act like that. I was stupefied at the hostile replies, including one that simply stated, “Because you’re fucking white.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. White middle-class women of a certain age are among the last groups one can hurl targeted abuse online without being canceled. All over Twitter and Facebook, one sees evidence neither male nor female progressives have a problem with a meme that stereotypes white middle-aged women as entitled, whiny, and stupid at best — and at worst, obscene wielders of racist privilege, like Amy Cooper in Central Park. Her 911 call against a black, male bird-watcher trying to get her to put her illegally off-leash dog back on its leash arguably rose to the level of attempted assault-by-proxy, given how police approach black men deemed…