Skip to main content
The Latest

According to Heritage Foundation Webinar, ‘Karen’ Is a ‘Socially Approved Racial Slur’

(Source: JHVEPhoto / Shutterstock.com)

The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles told listeners ​of an interview he conducted with Heritage Foundation senior fellow Mike Gonzalez that the name “Karen,” when used to refer to white women, is a “socially approved racial slur.”

During a Tuesday webinar hosted by the Heritage Foundation, an intellectual and policy powerhouse of the right-wing movement, Knowles and Gonzalez discussed the basis of Gonzalez’s latest book, “The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free.” Gonzalez argued in his interview that identity politics and critical theory are wrongly​ applied to the education system and the workplace.

(Screenshot / Heritage Foundation Webinar)

Gonzalez and Knowles approached what Knowles called the “woman question”: why women are an “aggrieved minority” despite making up a majority of the U.S. population. Gonzalez said he had seen that dynamic shift​ and that white women were being moved into an “oppressor class.” To support these claims, the duo discussed the slang term "Karen," which has been popularized online as a way to satirize middle-aged white women filmed in viral videos committing obnoxious or racist acts.

“You have this new term, ‘Karen,’ that comes in and people are mocking women as ‘Karens,’ which is [a] really bizarre phenomenon to be happening,” Gonzalez said, adding that although he has not read Robin DiAngelo’s book “White Fragility,” the book contains a chapter titled “White Women’s Tears.”

“I am with you. I have not yet mustered sufficient masochism to read the ‘White Fragility’ book​, but it has become very popular as has this term ‘Karen.’ The term Karen, though it is in common use, is a racial slur,” Knowles said. “It refers explicitly to white women. The difference is it’s a socially acceptable racial slur.”