My “Best Friend” Is a KKKaren
The Thread
I recently shared this personal story on Threads:
“In my 20s, I babysat a friend’s daughter while she, her partner, parents, and sister were at the cinema watching the new Batman movie.
The text I received from her later that evening:
‘Did you accidentally take one of our blankets?’
Me: ‘No.’
Back then, I didn’t know I was Black.
Today, I know she was testing to see whether I had stolen anything.
Today, I also see that this so-called best friend was the epitome of a Karen.
This is the result of being trafficked and raised by ⚪ people.”
A commenter:
“It’s ugly when you’re in an abusive relationship, and you don’t know it because it’s all you know, and that 💩 has been normalised. Micro-aggression is still abuse.”
This comment is spot on, and I wish I had known this in my 20s.
My “best friend’s” text was not innocent.
It was a test: a quiet accusation and investigation.
It was a microaggression, racial profiling, racism.
Karen & The Echo Chamber
My “best friend” and the group around her embodied what many of us now recognise as a Karen: entitled, hypocritical, patronising, self-righteous, manipulative, and convinced of their own innocence and moral superiority.
“Bestie” was the type of white woman who would insist she couldn’t possibly be racist because her sister once dated a Black guy in high school. The kind who believed that having me as a friend and following Black people on social media proved her moral purity. And yet during our four-year friendship, “bestie” called me the N-word and mocked my 4C hair, saying it looked like pubic hair.
Her ignorance ran as deep as her entitlement and arrogance.
During those four years of “friendship” with the group, I heard (“neger” is the Danish equivalent of the N-word):
“Yes, she’s pretty for a neger.”
“Don’t worry, if you hit anyone, it’s just a neger.”
“Shut up, you fucking neger.”
“How do you go nose-to-nose when your lips are so big, and your nose is flat?”
The list goes on, and even still, these ignorant fuckers deny they’re racist.
Whenever I reacted to their racism, I was tone-policed, shamed, and made to feel dramatic. The problem was not racism, but my reaction to it. Accountability was nowhere to be found. Gaslighting and deflection appeared to be their native language.
In their ignorant minds, racism is reduced to dislike or hatred of certain people.
Had they bothered to humble themselves and read a book or two, they might understand that racism is far more complex than their embarrassingly simplistic definition of it.
The Facebook Messages
After my TV appearance, years after our “friendship” ended, Karen and another racist reached out to me.
My whole body was repulsed at the sight of their names in my inbox. Unfortunately, I was a people-pleaser and had yet to master boundaries, so, to my biggest regret, I replied.
After Karen had finished whining and centring her pain, she casually slipped in, “We were equally…”
Hold up.
Equally what, Karen?
I was one person who spoke the truth you couldn’t handle.
You were six people echoing the same bullshit.
Six against one is not equal, but I understand that the math ain’t mathing in your coloniser mind.
Like the coward that you are, I understand self-reflection and accountability aren’t your strongest assets.
My Awakening
Awakening to my Black identity was one of the most shattering experiences of my life. It was not just an intellectual realisation but a reckoning. Suddenly, decades of confusion made sense: the jokes, comments, discomfort, subtle exclusions, and the way people monitored and questioned me. The way people duped me into believing that I was “too sensitive” for reacting to their abuse. I could finally see the racism for what it was and how I had been gaslit.
During this awakening, I was working with a white trauma psychologist. After a year and a half, I fell into a profound identity crisis and shifted to a Black trauma therapist and worked with her for about a year to “understand what it meant to be Black.” Throughout this year, what changed wasn’t just how I understood myself as a Black woman in a white society, but how my childhood had programmed me to deny my Blackness and tolerate disrespect and abuse.
Releasing Shame
I still feel disgust and resentment when I think about Karen and the echo chamber, but I have released the shame and guilt I carried. And that is essential because one of the least spoken-about aspects of healing from abuse is how deeply we blame ourselves for what we endured. We look back and ask:
How could I have tolerated that?
How could I have been so dumb?
What the fuck was I thinking?
I’ve asked those questions many, many times, and I was angry with myself for years.
Today, I send so much love to that past version of me because she did not know her worth.
I wish I had shown myself compassion rather than shame and anger, and asked myself:
How was I supposed to know better when I came from severe abuse?
I did not grow up in a home where adults mirrored that I had value.
The adults around me did not model what respect or healthy love looked like, so how was I supposed to know anything about healthy relationships?
Most survivors of childhood complex trauma received the bare minimum, if that.
How could we possibly have any sense of worth or even begin to grasp what high-quality relationships look like when we have never experienced them?
If you’re reading this and can relate to my experience in any way, please show yourself some grace.
Had you known you deserved better, you would have walked away; it’s not your fault.
With love,
Jazzlyn
P.S. To listen to the Danish episode where my friend Amanda and I discuss our experiences with racism in our close relationships, click below. I go into detail about my experience in the “friend group.”
