Caren, the Anti-Karen
It was August 1997. After a hot, grueling football practice, I collapsed onto my dorm room bed with no intentions of getting up until sunrise. Then, of course, the phone rang. No, not the cell phone. Did I even have a cell phone in 1997? This was the dorm phone. The no-caller-ID havin’, plugged-into-the-wall, 1984 AT&T dial-9-to-get-out dorm room phone. I got up, walked across the room, and picked up.
On the other end of the line was no ordinary American. And this would be no ordinary phone call.
After enduring the Great Depression, surviving the Second World War, and pretending the ’60s and Watergate never happened, it was now their patriotic duty to call upon their grandchildren and demand that they answer the challenge of defending America well into the 21st century.
This was a call…from The Greatest Generation.
“Colin, it’s Grandma. You need to go to your house right now. Your parents aren’t home and there’s a black boy there with your sister.”
Nap time was over before it began.
What followed was a mostly predictable argument, although Grandma did impress with a few surprisingly original racial slurs. Grandpa may have shot down 13 Nazi aircraft (9 confirmed) in the war, but shoot me down this day he could not. I defended my sis, and, consequently, the two of us had started an inter-generational war in my family.
That was the moment my little sister, who liked riding horses and Debbie Gibson and being a cheerleader, became Caren Short, bad ass motherfucker. You see, when Grandma began yelling some of the most horrifying things imaginable to her, she was, at first, sad and hurt. That lasted about 14 minutes. After that, she got pissed.
She’s been pissed ever since.
The incident with my grandparents, in which they lambasted and shamed her for dating a Black classmate in high school, proved to be the springboard for her life’s work. Her eyes were opened to the vast array of racism, sexism, and xenophobia in our country. And she vowed to do something about it.
Caren graduated from Purdue with a degree in political science. Then, she set her sights on the only law school in the world she wanted to attend: Howard University. Howard Law is the mecca of civil rights law. And it is an HBCU, which is really the only logical place one should study civil rights law in America, right? Studying civil rights law among mostly affluent white students makes as much sense to me as studying rap music with Vanilla Ice.
Oh, and Snow. Remember that dude? God, Snow sucked. Sorry, Snow. Be well, Snow.
After graduating from Howard Law third in her class, she embarked on a career as a civil rights attorney in which she has worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, and the Advancement Project. Caren has worked to protect people who are undocumented and/or migrant workers in the South, worked to protect people living in poverty from being imprisoned for not being able to afford paying fines, worked to ensure that school systems in the South comply with the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. Board of Education. (Wait, schools in the South still violate Brown vs Board of Education? Hell, yes, they do.) Now she works to secure voting rights for disenfranchised people.
This is the lesson I have learned from my sister: no half-measures. Don’t pretend racism isn’t there. Don’t let people off with silence or a shrug. Be willing to risk friendships. Family relationships. The status quo. Risk everything for the cause of justice. Because that’s the difference between the Black experience and the white one. They don’t have a choice of whether or not they risk everything, every day. White people do. And for 402 years now on this continent, most white people have chosen to take half-measures, or no measures at all.
402 years is long enough to know that half-measures don’t fucking work. But half-measures are a hallmark of human behavior because they remove confrontation from everyday life.
When I first began hearing the term, “Karen”, to identify out-of-touch, racist, middle-age white women who liked to call the cops on Black people for any reason, I chuckled at the irony. My Caren, who, thankfully, spells her name with a “C” instead of the traditional “K”, is exactly the opposite of those awful people. And yes, I do think the “C” in her name stands for “compassion”, and the “K” in their names stands for “Klan”. Thanks for asking.
Initially, it looked like “Becky” would be the term to stick. But, even though there is no specific incident to which “Karen” is traced, it is now the unquestioned queen of defining your local racist white woman who would like to speak to the manager right now.
Shamann Walton, a city supervisor in San Francisco, took the term to a new level by recently introducing the “CAREN Act”, which would make it illegal for people to make “unnecessary emergency calls to authorities based on racial prejudice.” In order to make the acrostic, “Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies”, work, he had to eschew the “K” for the “C”.
I admit, even though it shouldn’t have been a big deal, the change to a “C” bummed me out. Why not “Kindly Avoid Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies”? Okay, okay. Maybe not. After all, this is ultimately a great thing, so I decided to change my outlook. Now, I’m glad it’s the “CAREN” Act. Because no white person I know has done more to fight this battle. But I’m going to change the acrostic if you don’t mind, to honor my sister.
Compassionately
Advocating
Racial
Empathy
Now
Over the years, friends and family of ours have shared their opinions about Caren to me, most of which can be summarized as, “I get why she’s against racism, but she’s so extreme about it. It turns people off.” James Baldwin wrote, “I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
Caren’s not turning you off. Caren is forcing you to deal with your pain.
Today, amidst the crucial Black Lives Matter movement, if you are white, you may be tempted to be a Karen. I challenge you to instead be a Caren. If so, change will come.
Follow Caren Short on Twitter: @CarenShort
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