Plus, while the woman working out was going back and forth across the steps, she was going away from that side, and past the middle point right then. There was plenty of room on those steps. It was a deliberate bump.
I bet Karen doesn’t believe in COVID either, and bitches at the stores that make her pull up her bandana.
Naturally, it’s all of society. I just don’t hold with the “one old woman is harmless” argument. Who knows how damage she’s done in her 60+ malicious years.
That sucks. Sorry that happened to you and your family.
Not that logic is the forte of racists, but the racist straight up admitted banning dogs had nothing to do with dogs and everything to do with having an excuse to persecute POC, “for the (white) children”, or at least for racists parents intent on the abusive practice of indoctrinating their children.
Teaching kids to be racist is and really should be treated as child abuse.
No argument there. My point is that plenty of people raise their kids with actively racist views whose kids reject that and vice-versa. The larger issue is the systems racism that reinforces racist ideology.
Not cool.
She should be called out on her racism, but terms like “permanent solution” are the words of Nazis, and not ones we should use.
I agree. A conservative guy I know said shaming people was unproductive, and that “persuasion” was needed. Bullshit I say. They are unpersuadable. The only thing that works is to get them to shut up and mind their own fucking business.
Systemic racism didn’t just pop into existence from nowhere. I bet this woman is at every possible city counsel meeting talking about “the problem”. Complaining that police must be more aggressive. She is one component of the larger system.
Yep; I hope this results in her getting kicked out of her knitting club and being ostracized by groups of early morning mall-walkers.
Especially if she raised kids with similar attitudes.
We don’t know if she’s an authority figure or not. Women like this were my church ministers and my elementary school teachers and my Girl Scout troop leaders and my school board members and my local librarians. They behave this way because they think they are in the right, and they think that because nobody they think are “real Americans” has ever done anything but look away in silence when they pull this crap. We won’t change this woman’s heart now, but we may make her too afraid of the backlash to do this again.
I get the feeling she isn’t very pleasant even when she isn’t actively being racist. I’m hoping this is the push that people around her needed to tell her to go fuck off.
She literally asked for it to be put on Facebook, so she can’t say she didn’t see it coming.
let me expand on my view a little. The old woman’s attitude will change when the people in power stop pandering to her. She is a nobody, unworthy of my hatred.
IMO, racism is a systematic issue, not an issue with individual people. Racial bigotry is the symptom of a successfully operating racist system. The individuals who act in racist manners by displaying their prejudice are not the people in power. We don’t get rid of racism by attacking the least powerful bigots or by filming and showing their ignorance. We get rid of it by dismantling the governmental and societal structures put in place by powerful people with the intention of maintaining their power.
Perhaps growing up in Apartheid South Africa (and later Rizzo’s Philadelphia) made me dispassionate about the casual expressions of ignorance by racist fools, as I watched families and churches being attacked by institutional forces. It wasn’t the casual expressions of racial animosity of our neighbors that scared my family, it was the surveillance state and the actions of the uniformed and the secret police. Once the institutions of racism were dismantled, the hard work of changing individual attitudes began. We saw this in South Africa with the TRC, and maybe we are starting to see this kind change in the US as we talk – seriously – about defunding police departments. But sending internet mobs after individual bigots isn’t part of the solution, and it does nothing to change the attitude of people who aren’t already on our side. It’s more likely to harden the attitudes of the people in power, causing them to increase the level of aggression and decrease the possibility of institutional change without civil war.
Have you considered the possibility that one of the ways in which institutional, systemic racism can be fought is by refusing to tolerate and/or excuse away the individual instances of racist behavior we encounter?
Zero tolerance is the answer; stamp this shit out whenever and wherever you encounter it.
Next family Zoom get-together:
“Gramma, why are you racist?”
The whole “Karen” meme originated from white women exercising the disproportionate influence they have when interacting with police (i.e., all parties involved know damn well that when a white woman calls a cop on a black guy the cop is probably going to side with the white woman). So there’s an inherent power imbalance at play even if she’s not an official “authority figure.”
I’m glad you’re not my doctor. A good one treats both the symptoms and the disease.
She’s not a nobody any more than a POC murdered by the police is a nobody. It doesn’t take a high-ranking or well-off person being involved for people to step up and say “enough”. It’s the preponderance of evidence of this systemic racism that causes the tide.
One event of wrongdoing by police has resulted in literally hundreds of other examples being posted. And it’s that immense weight of evidence, coupled with so many standing up and saying “Enough” that moves the needle.
This video by itself does not move the needle. The many, many equivalent videos that are popping up all over will, because in their aggregate, they can no longer be considered one-offs or infrequent occurrences.
