When “Karen” Gives Me The Silent Treatment
Or the white lady who co-exists in my space but doesn’t speak to me
A while back, I joined the board of a local organization. Before joining, I knew there wasn’t much diversity, but I saw my role as a door opener for other minorities. Not long after I joined, I realized that the white lady in charge of admin issues never made eye contact with me. It felt strange since I saw her make eye contact and chat with everyone else — all white. At first, I didn’t think much of it. Maybe she wasn’t used to interacting with Black people and felt a little uneasy around me. Living in a place like Switzerland, where there are few Black people in certain parts of the country, I am used to that.
Some tiny things went wrong, and whenever I emailed her asking her for assistance, she didn’t respond. I took it to mean that she had too many board members to manage and couldn’t necessarily always respond to all their emails. Do you see what I did there? I found an excuse as to why this white lady, this “Karen,” was treating me the way she did. That’s one thing that many white people do not get about Black people. We do not throw the word ‘racist’ out lightly. We will spend a long time trying to justify people’s behavior by other factors until it becomes crystal clear that that person has an issue with us because of the…
