Watch: ‘Karen’ Rant At South Bay Post Office Captured On Video
LOS ALTOS, CA – Another day, another “Karen” incident.
In a recent case involving a racist act caught on camera, a white woman is shown on video shouting epithets at a South Bay post office employee.
The woman is initially heard muttering “ch*nk” under her breath as she berates an Asian American woman working at a post office in Los Altos, and then shouts “bit*h … f***ing ch*nk” as she storms out after being confronted by others amid her rant.
The incident was recorded at about 4:15 p.m. on Thursday afternoon at the post office at 221 Main St.
Racist “Karen” harrasing Asian Woman at the #Postal office#LosAltos #California
She calls the worker “chi*k”#pavelpaulinich #westcoast #la #cali #usps #ups #fedex #amazon #prime #letter #karen #karensgonewild #karensgoingwild #kevin #racist #asian #asiangirls #asianamerican pic.twitter.com/KllQXpidbX
— Karens Going Wild by Pavel Paulinich (@pavelpnews) July 27, 2020
A South Bay man told ABC7 News that he recorded the incident because he wanted to expose the existence of racism in Silicon Valley.
“The reason I did it was to spread awareness and to let people know that this is happening all around us. I live in the Silicon Valley and this is happening in Los Altos California,” Tyler Brumfield told ABC7 News.
“Just because someone is different or has different melanin that doesn’t mean that we need to disregard the humanity of that particular person.”
Last month two Bay Area “Karen” incidents went viral.
A woman identified as a South Bay special education teacher was captured on surveillance video spitting on a 1-year-old at a San Jose frozen yogurt shop.
In Belmont, a woman was shown on video coughing on a bartender after refusing to wear a mask.
“Karen” is a pejorative term used to describe an angry white woman who traffics in racism.
The incident is among the most recent in a surge of cases of abuse against persons of Asian descent amid the coronavirus crisis, many of which have occurred in the Bay Area.
Earlier this month a disgraced former Silicon Valley CEO was kicked out of an upscale Monterey County restaurant after a profanity-laced tirade directed at an Asian American family celebrating a birthday, an incident capture on a video that has gone viral on Instagram.
Michael Lofthouse has resigned from his role at Solid8, a Los Gatos-based information technology company according to a San Francisco Chronicle report.
On Wednesday, passengers who refused to wear masks on a San Francisco Muni bus used racial slurs in an assault on an Asian American driver in which he was attacked with a small baseball bat, The San Francisco Chronicle reports.
The driver suffered a fractured finger and bruises, according to the report. He was also spit on.
President Trump has fueled animosity towards people of Asian descent throughout the pandemic with repeated use of racist rhetoric, using terms such as the "China virus," and "Kung flu" to prorogate the idea that the Chinese are responsible for coronavirus crisis.
“It has more names than any disease in history. I can name kung flu. I can name 19 different versions of names,” Trump to cheers from a crowd at a Tulsa rally last month.
As of July 1 there were 2,210 reported incidents of racial discrimination against Asian Americans in the United States and 832 in California since the beginning of the pandemic Axios reports, citing data from the group, Stop Asian American Pacific Islander Hate.
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Several incidents have occurred in the Bay Area.
A woman was spat on in broad daylight in San Francisco in March, multiple South Bay Asian-owned business were vandalized in April, and a rash Anti-Asian graffiti was found in a San Mateo neighborhood in May.
Charissa Cheah, a University of Maryland Baltimore County psychology professor who leading a study researching discrimination against Chinese Americans amid the coronavirus crisis, told The Washington Post that Trump's rhetoric is a factor in the surge of racist-inspired incidents.
"[Trump is] essentially throwing his American citizens or residents of Chinese and Asian descent 'under the bus' by ignoring the consequences of the language he uses," Cheah told The Post. "He's fueling these anti-Chinese sentiments among Americans … not caring that the people who will truly suffer the most are Chinese Americans and other Asian Americans, his citizens whom he's supposed to protect."
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This article originally appeared on the Los Gatos Patch
