Month: May 2023

The Spectator – Her ideological deviation was to suggest that white women, too, can be the victims of stereotypes.

Karens are, to use a leftist term, “problematic.” In use as a pejorative for four or five years now, “Karen” appropriates a common Generation X girl’s name to refer to an entitled middle-aged woman who demands exceptional treatment, undeserved deference and unearned “privilege” to make her way through life or to express power through unwarranted concern for others. Karens are generally believed to be middle-class or slightly above, sport an unsmiling no-nonsense mien and favor a pert bob hairdo that stylists now routinely call the “speak-to-the-manager,” after a request Karens commonly make when they encounter disappointment.

Documented Karen misbehavior abounds on social media, where multitudes of TikTok and Instagram users can observe short videos of petulant white women losing control in a variety of embarrassing social situations. Some have argued that “Karen” has become a political slur against conservative women, but Karenhood in fact manifests across the political spectrum. The term has been applied to Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, and Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican. Karens can be pro-life or pro-choice with equal alacrity. In Covid times, they could be pro- or anti-vaccination and upbraid masked or unmasked fellow citizens alike.

Like just about everything else these days, however, Karenhood inevitably bears a racialist burden. In 2020, post-George Floyd, a white Manhattan woman named Amy Cooper was denounced as a Karen after falsely reporting that a black man was threatening her and her dog when he was merely admonishing her for letting the dog run unleashed in Central Park. Cooper was publicly identified, criminally charged, fired from her finance job and even lost custody of her dog. From that point on, a Karen’s grievances could be diverse, but Karen herself could not: she could only ever be white.

That episode notwithstanding, an honest application of the new racial sensitivity, and the ostensible principles of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI), should address any racially derogatory term, including one referring to white females. This is apparently what Uber’s chief diversity officer Bo Young Lee thought last month when she moderated a Zoom event titled “Don’t Call Me Karen” featuring a panel of white female Uber employees for some 500 of their colleagues at the ride-hailing service’s corporate headquarters.

Lee seems to have been sincere, using only the most polished diversity jargon to describe her events as “diving into the spectrum of the American white woman’s experience from some of our female colleagues, particularly how they navigate around the ‘Karen persona.’” Her event, also billed as an “open and honest conversation about race,” seemed a logical feature of Uber’s current corporate culture, which long suffered from accusations of gender discrimination and sexual harassment. After the resignation of the company’s former CEO Travis Kalanick, its current leadership found it necessary to address these issues, in part by hiring Lee as Uber’s diversity chief in 2018.

Alas, Lee swiftly learned that some grievances are more equal than others. Uber employees of color angrily denounced her Karen-themed event, with one black female employee alluding to it as “tone-deaf, offensive and triggering,” apparently because it placed white experiences of discrimination on par with non-white ones. Others objected to Lee’s cool response, which informed her critics that sometimes conversations about race can be uncomfortable.

Last week, Lee held a second event, an “all-hands-on-deck” Zoom call intended to address the growing controversy. It backfired massively, leaving other minority employees feeling “scolded” and “lectured” — reactions coincidentally not uncommon among white professionals unfortunate enough to be forced to sit through mandatory diversity training. One minority critic at Uber even wondered why “Karen” should be off limits if it describes white women who indulge in racism. “Why can’t bad behavior not be called out?” she wanted to know.

Lee could not survive this virtual struggle session. On May 18, the day after her second event, Uber’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and “chief people officer” Nikki Krishnamurthy fatefully asked her “to step back and take a leave of absence while we determine next steps.” Krishnamurthy then wrote staff to acknowledge the “pain” of those who “did not feel heard” during Lee’s Zoom events. To complete this bizarrely atavistic community healing ritual, aggrieved Uber employees expressed their satisfaction with the C-suite’s response, with one celebrating that the managers “have heard us, they know we are hurting.”

How nice of them, but it is probably of little comfort to Uber’s hardest-working employees — its drivers — who are largely minorities who frequently complain of low real wages and capricious administrative policies from which their emotionally fragile managers’ dog-and-pony show virtue signaling so easily distracts.

Lee has been purged. Her ideological deviation was to suggest that white women, too, can be the victims of stereotypes and prejudice. A fair-minded person might agree, but the true racists who run the DEI syndicate do not. According to their spiritual godfather Ibram X. Kendi, all white people are inherently racists, while non-whites are inherently incapable of racism. As they see it, anyone who refutes that rigid formula thereby only confirms his or her racism and falls far beyond the pale of acceptability, even if that person is, like Lee, a minority whose supposed devotion to white supremacy is not precluded by color or heritage.

Lee’s mistake, which will likely prove fatal to her job and career, was to embrace diversity of the wrong kind. Now, probably very afraid for her future and offering no comment to any media, she is a disgraced true believer whose exorcism will only purify the ideology she wasn’t good or loyal enough to serve. Until the whole rotten DEI system is uprooted from every corner of American institutional life, others will follow her pathetic path to ruin while the remaining ideologues fight over the finer points of their perverse doctrine. Let us celebrate their inevitable extinction… and switch to Lyft.

Newsweek – This is a wonderful opportunity to turn things around, and we’re glad to give it to you,” New York County (Manhattan) Assistant District Attorney Mary Weisgerber naively told the late Jordan Neely in court on February 9, 2023. On that date, Neely, a 30-year-old homeless man suffering from severe mental illness and reported drug abuse, learned that he would not be sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to his brutal November 2021 assault of a 67-year-old woman on a Lower East Side street. Neely had punched the woman so hard that he inflicted severe facial damage, including a broken nose. Instead, despite more than 40 prior arrests, including at least three for assault, he was ordered to spend 15 months in a public mental health facility, take prescribed medication, and avoid use of narcotics.

Neely agreed with the presiding judge, Ellen N. Biben, that his “goal” was to make it through this non-punitive program. Just 13 days later, however, he fled the facility, causing Judge Biben to issue an arrest warrant. Over the subsequent weeks, New York City outreach officials and police officers publicly encountered Neely three times but did not return him to any form of custody. On one of these occasions, Neely dropped his pants and urinated in front of them.

On the afternoon of May 1, while riding the subway through a fashionable part of Lower Manhattan, Neely informed his fellow passengers that he would kill any of them, throw them out of the subway car, and do so without regard for his own life. According to witnesses, a decorated 24-year-old former U.S. Marine Corps sergeant called Daniel J. Penny restrained Neely in a chokehold, a technique regularly taught in Marine Corps basic training, until law enforcement arrived. Neely resisted so strongly that two other passengers had to assist Penny in detaining Neely, while others recorded the altercation. Although Penny has, through legal counsel, disclaimed any intent to cause harm and released Neely upon the arrival of first responders, Neely later died at a hospital.

Under New York criminal law, Neely’s threats appear to have constituted menacing, an arrestable offense for threats of bodily harm made in the absence of physical contact. The intervention of Penny and the other passengers, however tragic the results, appear to be justified under Article 35 of New York State Penal Law, which allows for the use of force if there is a reasonable belief that physical harm to oneself or others may be imminent—if, for example, an individual threatens to kill you, and others, in a public place. Accordingly, the police released Penny after questioning. He has not yet been arrested or charged with any crime.

The crucial factor, however, is that Neely was black and Penny is white. Even before the facts were established, social justice warriors went to work. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) almost immediately took to Twitter to declare Penny’s actions “murder.” Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul has called for “consequences,” “justice,” and $1 billion in state budget funds set aside for mental health spending. Manhattan Borough President Mark D. Levine claimed Neely “always made people smile” and moralized that “our broken mental health system failed him,” rather than the dozens of poor choices that resulted in Neely’s 40-plus arrests and ultimate predicament in a fatal chokehold administered by a man he physically threatened. Many others have demanded Penny’s arrest and blamed Neely’s death on “systemic racism,” “lynching,” and “white vigilantism”—progressive straw men that curiously never seem to disappear no matter how many Democrats are elected and re-elected to public office, no matter how much money is cut from urban police budgets, and no matter how leniently blue-state criminal justice systems prosecute crimes committed by people of color (when they prosecute them at all).

On Saturday, protestors shut down a Manhattan subway station, “occupied” its tracks, physically prevented passengers from leaving an arriving train, and assaulted police officers while chanting, “no justice, no peace.” Black Lives Matter demonstrators threatened to “tear the city down” unless Penny is arrested. Two days later, a candlelight vigil for Neely turned violent. New York City leaders who have pleaded for calm and due process, including Mayor Eric Adams—a former police captain who has criticized attempts to label Penny a murderer—have been denounced by the protestors, who marched through the streets of Manhattan chanting, “F*** Eric Adams.”

According to ABC‘s New York City affiliate, New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg is soon expected to call a grand jury to evaluate criminal charges against Penny. This is consistent with Bragg’s decision in July 2022 to charge New York City bodega worker Jose Alba with second-degree murder after he used a knife to defend himself against an assailant in his workplace—a charge Bragg’s office dropped only under significant political pressure. Notably, this is the same Alvin Bragg who just last month brought dubious felony charges against former President Donald J. Trump in a case that a large majority of Americans believe is politically motivated.

Pursuing charges against Penny would also complement Adams’ recent attempts to frustrate a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring New York to permit the carrying of concealed weapons—a policy that has been correlated with reduced crime in other jurisdictions. Those jurisdictions include Florida, where crime rates are at a 50-year low, where hundreds of thousands of crime-weary New Yorkers have relocated in arguably the largest outmigration in their former state’s history, and where recently signed legislation now allows permitless carry of concealed handguns.

From the progressive Left, however, the message is clear: If you are a New Yorker, particularly a white New Yorker, you have virtually no right to self-defense. In addition to Gotham’s many other shortcomings, the only lesson its terrorized denizens can draw from Daniel Penny’s likely fate is that they must consent to their own victimization or feel the full brunt of the law. Racial justice will have it no other way.