I Caught Myself Being Racist Towards…

Over the last decade or so, I’ve been doing something bad. Whenever I was in a shop and I needed to know where something was, I would ask a staff member who was either of Indian appearance, or East Asian appearance, or African appearance, or a Caucasian man. But the other day, I caught myself out. There was a white lady staff member ahead of me, and a few metres beyond her, there was an Indian girl. I caught myself walking past the white lady to go ask the Indian girl instead. But then I said to myself, “This is wrong!” You see, more than a decade ago, I had a few run-ins with so-called Karens, middle-aged white ladies, and ever since then, I’ve been avoiding them in public. But this time, I said, “No! This is stupid, and kind of racist!”, and asked the white lady instead. And of course, she was fine. She was very polite and very helpful. It was me who was being the idiot. Now my policy is simple, I just ask the nearest staff member regardless of their appearance. As it should be.

#karen #socialissues #karens