Stephanie Denaro, a racist who will be forever known as “Bagel Karen.” | Source: Reddit / r/PublicFreakout
ne of the many byproducts of the
coronavirus pandemic has been the very predictable emergence of white women amplifying their privileges when it comes to exerting their purported moral authorities in reaction to the public health crisis. The people consistently at the center of such disturbing incidents have been mockingly dubbed “
Karens,” a generic name for the
white women being immortalized on the viral videos in which they are unwittingly starring.
The most recent installment of the ongoing Karen saga came in the form of
Stephanie Denaro, also known as “Bagel Karen” for her racist comments to a Black bakery worker who refused her service because she would not wear a mask in the New York City store. Denaro, who was accompanied by her young half-Black children, called the worker a “b—- a– n—–” to the horror and shock of onlookers, some of whom recorded the racist encounter and posted it to social media.
When she was confronted by the media later, she both doubled down on her racism as well as denied using the word, prompting
Durven Dawes, the Black man who fathered Denaro’s children, to recommend she seek “proper mental care.” TMZ reported that Dawes said Denaro using the N-word is “nothing new for her.”
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With the proliferation of all the Karens, it can be hard to keep track of them, especially as people are protesting against the very racism that they represent. But they resiliently keep exposing themselves, like in June when a Karen who lives in the Milwaukee area confronted protesters and spit on a teenager.
The uncontrollable rage of Stephanie Rapkin toward a young, diverse group of protesters peacefully demonstrating against the kind of racism she was unabashedly displaying got the 64-year-old lawyer arrested not once but twice in the span of as many days. Her’s was a special kind of Karening that was recorded on video and went viral for the world to witness the person who became better known as the “Shorewood Spitter.”
And if you thought Karens could only be women, get your sexist mind out of the racial gutter. There have been a growing number of instances of white men unknowingly vying against their female counterparts (though there doesn’t seem to be anything more irresistible to police officers than a white woman’s tears, but we digress…) to one-up each other’s irrational anti-Black racism.
Those folks have been Christened as
“Karen’s Husband.” We met one earlier this year when a white man decided to call the cops on protestors because they were allegedly “honking horns” near his home. In peak white entitlement fashion, he tried to use his service in the military as a reason why he has the authority to make demands.
In another video, a group of Black entrepreneurs described being racially profiled by a white man in a Minnesota building where they rent office space.
Previously, one Karen had an unwanted moment of international attention when a woman named
Amy Cooper claimed to be deathly afraid of a Black man because he asked her to put her dog on a leash in New York City’s Central Park where bird watching is popular. Oh, and because it is
against the rules to have dogs off leashes in the public park. It was one of the more egregious instances of Karen trying to police a Black person under flagrantly racist pretenses.
Source: @melodyMcooper / Twitter
The incident unfolded early on the Memorial Day holiday after
Christian Cooper (obviously, no relation) spotted Karen’s dog off the leash in a part of Central Park called the Ramble. The video begins directly afterward and shows Karen, clearly embarrassed at being rightfully called out, reacting mercilessly on both human and canine levels, fumbling to put the leash on her dog while scrambling to call police at the same time. In doing so, she appeared to be choking, lifting and dragging her dog by the leash.
Karen can be seen and heard repeating in a shaky voice on her phone that “there’s an African American man threatening my life.” Christian Cooper’s video, of course, showed that the only apparent threat came when Karen moved aggressively toward him despite his pleas for her to stop advancing in his direction.
Watch the video below.
https://twitter.com/melodyMcooper/status/1264965252866641920?s=20
Prior to that madness,
a social media debate broke out over the racial connotation behind the name Karen, with white women claiming it was the “N-word for white women.”
But not all of these videos have a racial undertone to them, either, as many of the so-called Karens show just as much negative energy toward their fellow white folks as they do to Black people. The underlying theme each time remains the same — how dare anybody go against what Karen says?
That privileged attitude, however, has not prevailed as it used to not so long ago when an earlier incarnation of the Karens —
BBQ Beckys — dominated the news cycle by calling the police on Black people who were somehow exhibiting threatening behavior by participating in everyday activities that included but were definitely not limited to having a cookout, selling Girl Scout cookies and studying in a university library.
Source: YouTube
Karens were already rising to infamy before the coronavirus pandemic set in. But as the
COVID-19 crisis has continued, so have the Karens, undeterred in getting their points across.
From questioning why a Black police officer was “breaking into” his own home to assaulting workers at a Red Lobster restaurant who were only enforcing social distancing guidelines to finding a UPS worker “suspicious” for delivering packages to threatening pharmacy employees, the coronavirus has emboldened Karens across the world.
Another hallmark of the Karen videos is the decided absence of
police violence. In one video, a Karen is joined by a throng of other Karens at a playground, one of the many places initially ruled off-limits during the pandemic. The video opens with a police officer politely and patiently asking the lead Karen to kindly leave since playgrounds were closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, especially among the young. But the head Karen in charge had other ideas and decided to mouth off to the cop, who gave her multiple chances to leave before he finally arrested her. We shudder to think of the police treatment a Black person would have received for exhibiting the same behavior.
That came after a male Karen blocked a Black delivery driver from leaving a gated community and called the police over the same kind of misguided suspicions that white folks have been known to have when they see Black and brown skin.
For the full Karen experience of living life feeling like there are no consequences and repercussions for one’s own actions, scroll down for a hearty dose of Karens’ reality as documented in the growing number of videos below.
