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Abstract

This research seeks to examine how white women, deemed culturally to be “Karens”, employ behaviors in an effort to maintain racial boundaries and, subsequently, preserve whiteness. By relying on previous scholar’s work in the sociology of whiteness, these findings aim to expand our understanding of whiteness as property to encompass things beyond material or economic wealth, to identify concrete examples of Feagin’s (2020) white racial frame in practice, as well as draw connections between Feagin’s (2020) work and the concept of “white habitus”, which describes strong networks or associations between white people that produce favorable ideas of whiteness and negative feelings towards people of color. Utilizing digital content analysis, this research analyzed ten TikTok videos found through the utilization of the hashtag “#racistKaren” that depicts recorded conflicts between white women and people of color in public spaces. Findings include that white women were driven to initiate suspicion motivated conflicts. In doing so, they often employed a variety of tactics with the ultimate goal of getting people of color to vacate the space they were occupying. These tactics include self-policing, intentions to threaten or harm, and calling upon third party intervention. Ultimately, these findings lend further insight into the social processes white women engage in when determining who belongs in what they deem to be “white space”, affirming that they are working to maintain the racial boundary and, ultimately, preserve the whiteness that accompanies that racial boundary.

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