In his 1912 introductory book The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell wrote that “common words, even proper names, are usually really descriptions. That is to say, the thought in the mind of a person using a proper name correctly can generally only be expressed explicitly if we replace the proper name by a description.” In other words, the “people, places, and things” picture of nouns we are taught in elementary school grammar doesn’t really get at how the words really work. Names don’t just pick out or point to things in the world. They are often disguised descriptions.
Recently, the online debate-o-sphere lit up with fierce discussion about the word “Karen,” which has become a not-very-disguised description for whatever resentments one might have toward a caricature of middle-aged white ladies. Dictionaries have gotten involved. It’s all a bit absurd. At the Root, Damon Young notes that Merriam-Webster cited him in its definition of “Becky” and teases out the distinctions between one of those and a Karen: “A ‘Karen’ is basically a graduated Becky who’s extremely aware of her privilege and weaponizes it.” What does this mean? Nothing. The words are being defined in real time by weird media outlets obsessed with writing about the essential characteristics of race groups. So, for an outlet called “Bitch Media,” it’s a major event. Here’s the Bitch correspondent (sorry!) with some added analysis to Dictionary.com’s stab at capturing the new usage of Karen: “While this definition is awfully lengthy, it doesn’t accurately portray one of the most important features of a Karen: her racism is inextricable from her white womanhood.”
I do not know how we got to a place as a society where the “extricability” of racism from a nonexistent, imagined person’s race- and ethnicity-hood is a question of general public interest. It seems like an area of inquiry that would cause even an academic philosopher to go all glazy in the eyes and lose interest, not least because it’s just a meaningless string of words. All of this layering on of pseudo-academic terminology is a sort of playacting at creating an intellectual study of something.
Still, it is always interesting when we use actual human names this way. “Karen” is just the latest, and the online fighting over it was supercharged by some troll claiming it is a slur as bad as the N-word. But that’s a red herring. Name-insults are not new. There was “Becky” and “Chad,” another weird online term that somehow means a guy who finds it easy to get laid and also is an insult. And this predates the internet. Typhoid Mary is a type we have all been reminded of lately. And we all know Tom — both Uncle and peeping — and negative Nancy, chatty Cathy, and on and on. There’s a word for this kind of description, and it’s “stereotype.” Stereotyping is a lazy habit of thought because it’s so imprecise. That’s what makes it so useful for people who want to act like people who have the same gender or race have the same low character. Of course, the fact that rich, white ladies don’t have a history of oppression as such means the emergence of Karen is just silly rather than dark. Using names as disguised descriptions for racial stereotypes is not equally ugly in all cases. But it is probably not a bad idea to recognize this mode of thinking for what it is and resist it.
