Racist and aggressive: in the United States, the “Karen” rage for worse and worse

The scene generally takes place as follows: a woman of a certain age, often white, rather privileged, believing herself in any case invested with imaginary rights and duties, approaches then verbally attacks a stranger on the pretext that she considers – wrongly – that this person offends her well-being, her freedom, her race or her superiority, or disturbs public order.

Without warning, she turns into fury, launches invectives, wants to submit her to his authority and threatens to involve the police.

For some time in the United States, and especially on the East Coast, a new social category has flourished: the “Karen”.

It is by this nickname (chosen because of the predominance of the first name in the 1960s and 1970s within white families) that public opinion designates these self-proclaimed vigilantes likely, for example, to check the papers of workers without any justification. Hispanics, those from black families bathing…

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