No One Tests Your Gangsta Like A Workplace Karen – Part 1

I imagine many of you saw the title and shook your head in agreement and might have even said “straight facts” under your breath. I actually didn’t plan to write this piece. I was one and done with The Liberals That Cried Black Lives Matter. However, my new work situation gave birth to this article because…you guessed it, I work with Karens. Now our understanding of “the Karen” in a more general sense is the white woman who weaponizes her whiteness in an attempt to threaten and intimidate black people into submitting to the “all-powerful white supremacy”. The workplace Karen is slightly different, but not by much. She’s not trying to literally murder YOU for disobeying her…just your career. For this discussion, we’ll be speaking specifically about co-workers, as corporate superiors are a whole other pandora’s box for another discussion.

Karens Always Know What They Are Doing

Before we get into it, let’s be clear about one thing, WHITE PEOPLE ALWAYS KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING. These people are born, raised and trained by both their families and society to believe they are superior to black folks in any and all facets of life. Anyone telling you or who has told you differently, is a fool, a coon or both. Point blank PERIOD. Brandi Suttles wrote about this in her piece “A Notice to Workplace Karens”, on Medium. (Sidenote: If you can ignore her cringe-worthy use of ‘BIPOC’ over simply saying ‘Black’, there’s good content in the article.) It points out the power dynamic white people expect in the workplace when dealing with Black co-workers. Now in her situation, she was the experienced employee trying to help a new white employee. In my situation, I’m the new employee, having previous office experience, with a white co-worker whose ONLY office experience is where we’re working now.

My workplace Karen #1(we’ll name her WK1) has been in our department the longest of any other employee(3.5 years), but has never held an office job outside of the organization (her previous work was at a statewide-only supermarket chain as a cashier). She brings a lot to the table in terms of understanding the organizational processes due to her long tenure. So in an environment with extremely high turnover, she’s become, haphazardly, invaluable. However, in working with her these last 2 months, WK1 is not the most operationally efficient employee. She does twice as much work when half as much will do. I’ve made suggestions to help streamline things and she has “fifty-leven” excuses for why it won’t or can’t work.

None of which are impressive or strong points mind you, especially considering the departmental and, more to the point, organizational mantra is “We don’t get paid enough to care.” So if you don’t get paid enough to care, then the least you can do for yourself is make your workday easier while you’re here for the 40 hours you’re exchanging for pay. But let’s face it, the real issue was SHE didn’t think of any of it. Meanwhile, in her little troglodytic brain, she’s thinking “This black chick has been here for 5 mins, coming in here trying to change things. Who the hell does she think she is?” What I THINK is that it’s obvious I’m more innovative and solutions-driven than you are, but I digress.

Let The Micro-Aggressions Begin

So without any further ado, let’s begin with the microaggressions. For those not hip, microaggressions are little seemingly innocent questions, comments, quips that white people say for nefarious purposes like: make us look stupid and incompetent, or fish out information to see “what kind of black person we are.” The wizardry of it all, is that these statements are disguised as absent-minded enough where the average joe who isn’t proficient in the art of white supremacy’s microaggressions would blow it off and suspect the white person “didn’t mean anything by it.” It starts as soon as you’re hired and you walk into the office to say Good Morning. Up until now, you might have thought they were the simple get to know you questions…but ah ah ahhh what did we say? WHITE PEOPLE ALWAYS KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING.

Asking about your educational background? Yeah they’re trying to size you up to see if you’re smarter than them or if, in their mind, you’re “qualified” for the same job or higher, than them. Asking you what kind of music you listen to? This is not for commonality purposes. They want to know how much “black music” you listen to because this information will determine for them how “ghetto” you are. Asking questions about your family, they want to know if you fit the stereotypical broken-home-raised-black person. There are others, like asking you about certain black athletes or pop culture black celebrities that might be in the news for one thing or another (Think OJ, Cosby, Kanye), because they want to get a temperature of whether or not they can say certain things around you without getting their mouth gone up in. In conversations, they always shimmy their way into yours when it has nothing to do with them, particularly when you and other black, or non-white, co-workers are talking. Then they hijack the conversation all in the name of trying to look like the expert or authority on everything.

When you challenge or correct them on anything, they get pissy and try to “one-up” you to justify why they’re the authority on the topic. It BOTHERS them when they’re surrounded by not only educated black people, but no-nonsense, on-code black people and my WK1 is no different. Here’s a neat little micro-aggro exchange to illustrate: Depending on when you read this, this incident took place in February, bka, Black History Month. This no-black-friends-having child asks me, “Hey, do you know who Jackie Mitchell is?” “No. But I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” I responded, because that’s what I say to people who can’t take the hint that they need to just stop talking and be quiet for a little while. She then tells me, Mitchell is a female baseball player who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig(she couldn’t pronounce Gehrig’s last name btw). I say “Oh Cool,” dismissively, because I couldn’t give less than a shit if I tried.

Now for the coons in the house who earn their bones and biscuits by caping for white people, here are some quick things about me. I’m a lover of sports. I grew up playing organized, rec-league, with friends and fam, didn’t matter; I was always game for some competition. So for you bones and biscuits out there thinking “Maybe she was trying to relate to you because you like sports and thought that was a cool fact.” Yeah. No, dear. Not when you’re telling me about some WHITE woman, during BLACK HISTORY MONTH. For me that’s suspect at minimum but, as we discussed earlier, WHITE PEOPLE ALWAYS KNOW WHAT THEY’RE DOING. So I know what she was doing and WK1 knows what she was doing. She was trying to be micro-aggro about black history month.

Every year, all over the interwebs,a historical black figure is highlighted every single day in February. THIS. ISN’T. NEW. WK1 wasn’t born YESTERDAY. It’s part of the mental game she’s trying to play. I find it interesting that around the time she said this, Google Doodle had recently highlighted Toni Stone. A black woman, who was the first woman in history to play professional baseball as a regular in a men’s major baseball league. SUDDENLY, WK1, an ADMITTED NON-SPORTS FAN, whimsically wants to share this random ass information about some white female baseball player…? Naw fam, you know and I know, WK1 WENT OUT OF HER WAY to find that info about that white woman. Let’s not try to make it be anything else other than what it was.

These are the little mental-gymnastic duality games Karens play. It’s the test. They’re like little kids learning the limits of their parents. How far can they push the envelope? And if we don’t stop them dead in their tracks at this early stage, we will quickly find out they are prepping for the big one. What big one you ask? Well, look out for the next part as we discuss how Karens test how racist they can be in your presence.