San Francisco Karen

Overview

San Francisco Karen refers to a viral video featuring a recording of a white man and woman confronting a person of color who is stenciling Black Lives Matter in chalk on their property. In the video, the woman, Lisa Alexander, assumes James Juanillo is not the property owner and calls the police. She later apologized.

Background

On June 11th, 2020, James Juanillo tweeted footage of the altercations with Alexander. He wrote, "A white couple call the police on me, a person of color, for stenciling a #BLM chalk message on my own front retaining wall. 'Karen' lies and says she knows that I don’t live in my own house, because she knows the person who lives here. #blacklivesmatter." The post received more than 18.7 million views, 523,000 likes and 195,000 retweets in less than two weeks (shown below).

A white couple call the police on me, a person of color, for stenciling a #BLM chalk message on my own front retaining wall. “Karen” lies and says she knows that I don’t live in my own house, because she knows the person who lives here. #blacklivesmatter pic.twitter.com/rOpHvKVwgP

— Jaimetoons (@jaimetoons) June 12, 2020

Developments

Apology

On June 14th, after the video went viral, Alexander apologized for the incident. She said, "I want to apologize directly to Mr. Juanillo. There are not enough words to describe how truly sorry I am for being disrespectful to him last Tuesday when I made the decision to question him about what he was doing in front of his home" (shown below).^[1]

On June 15th, the New York Post^[2] reported that the partner of Lisa Alexander, Robert Larkin, had been fired from his job at Raymond James, a wealth management company. The company announced the firing in a tweet^[3] (shown below).

Online Reaction

Following the release of the video, many online began meme-ing Lisa Alexander's appearance in the video. For example, Twitter^[4] user @NyetNope tweeted an image of Alexander with Nazi imagery photoshopped onto her likeness. The post received more than 1,600 likes and 240 retweets in less than one week (shown below, left).

Many commented included images of her touching her chin with her index finger. On June 15th, Twitter^[5] user @catholicdad420 added the image to a tweet about the imagery in David Lynch's surreal horror film Inland Empire. They wrote, "the grainy digital quality of Inland Empire helps make it one of Lynch’s most uncanny & disturbing works." The post received more than 3,300 likes and 410 retweets in less than one week (shown below, center). Twitter^[6] user @samu3lk tweeted an illustration of Alexander and wrote, "That one horrible racist woman has such an uncanny face I had to try to draw it." The tweet received more than 2,000 likes and 300 retweets in less than one week (shown below, right).

Search Interest

External References