AN EXPLOSIVE new film called Deconstructing Karen aims to get white women to acknowledge their own racism.

The hard-hitting documentary which see’s two women – one black and one Asian – have radically honest conversations with white women about their views on race, inequality and white supremacy – around the dinner table.

The film, which is released in the United Kingdom today on iTunes, is the brainchild of activists Regina Jackson and Saira Rao, who are the co-founders of Race 2 Dinner, a platform that hosts dinners with white women to explain how they could be complicit in oppressing black communities.

Speaking to The Voice, Ms Rao said: “We sit down with them and we help them to acknowledge their own racism and get them on the path to dismantle it.

“White people’s feelings have traditionally trumped black and brown pain, and it has to stop.”

The women, first got the idea after being invited to numerous dinners by white women who wanted to constantly proclaim that they hold no discriminatory thoughts towards black communities.

In 2018, Ms Rao ran for Congress in Denver, and Ms Jackson worked on her campaign and her platform was about discussing the importance of anti-racism work.

However, the pair say they were consistently bombarded by white women inviting them to dinners only to hear the women proclaim that they were not racist.

Ms Jackson said: “They would want to go to breakfast, lunch, dinner and cocktails with Saira to say ‘not me, I’m not racist’.”

Initially, Ms Rao dismissed the idea of attending, but decided to go, on one condition that Ms Jackson also attended and hosted the dinners with her.

The women hosted the first Race 2 Dinner sit down in January 2019, and say the reactions by some of white women when questioned about their thoughts on race was met with hostility and denial.

Ms Rao said: “So we did it and it went fully sideways. Full white lady Broadway musical, crying, arms folded, eyes rolling.

“We posted about it on Facebook the next day and it went fully viral.”

Ms Jackson told The Voice, she is well aware of a societal hierarchy where black women are at the bottom and “everyone thinks they are better than us.”

But is adamant it is time for this to be recognised so that something can be done about it.

“Let’s unlearn it, but you can’t unlearn it unless you acknowledge it,” she added.

Within Deconstructing Karen, the series of questions and exercises around the dinner table uncover some uncomfortable truths but it allows white women to admit there is a problem, which both Ms Jackson and Ms Rao say subsequently leads to “them doing the work to get well.”

The unconventional idea, attracted the attention of film director Patty Ivins Specht who instantly loved the concept and decided to make the film with the women.

Clips of the film went viral on social media and amassed millions of views and shared by celebrities and influencers, like actress Amanda Seales.

The women want Deconstructing Karen to be an eye-opening watch for everyone, to learn and unlearn, so that the next generation do not have to suffer from the long-lasting impact of white supremacy.

Ms Jackson said: “Black people should watch it because you will be affirmed. You won’t feel ghosted, you won’t feel like you are crazy.

“You will feel affirmed, you will feel acknowledged and you will feel seen.”

She added: “Black people use your voice, white people use your voice, indigenous people use your voice, Latino, Hispanic, Asian, use your voice to call out white nonsense when you see it and hear it.”

Ms Rao wants the film to “serve as a guide” for white people about how to talk about racism and other serious issues in a proactive and appropriate manner.”

Both Ms Jackson and Ms Rao have a long history of anti-racism work and believe the only way to stamp it out is to face it head on.

Ms Rao said: “Being nice hasn’t ended racism, holding people’s hands hasn’t ended racism.

“How many black, indigenous, Asian, Latino folks are getting murdered?”

“In the US, it’s a mass murder every other day,” she added.

For Ms Jackson, she wants black communities to start calling out racism for what it is and not dress it up in polite terms like “micro aggressions” and “unconscious bias.” 

She said: “We don’t talk about micro aggressions, there’s nothing micro about it, it’s racial aggression.”

“Those are all words to make white people comfortable and we are not doing that anymore,” she added.

Ms Rao who is of South Asian heritage, said what is key about the film and their wider work, is that Ms Jackson is a black woman and they are joining forces to tackle white supremacy and anti-blackness together.

She said: “A big part of this work is Regina being a black woman, and myself being Asian, non-black person of colour.

“We’re together saying we’re not going to be divided and conquered, we’re not doing that anymore.”

“They try to turn us against each other but it is also very important and its absolutely important in the UK for Asians and south Asians to acknowledge so we can also start dismantling our internalised anti-blackness, our Islamophobia, our casteism and colourism.”

She added: “For me to say white people need to get right, Asians also need to get right, we all need to get right.”

Together, the women have held hundreds of dinners, with white women from the US, Canada and the UK, and they continued to do virtual events during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ms Rao added: “Plenty of white people want to do this work and they want to get well.”

The co-founders say they have experienced some extreme reactions from some of the white women who have attended.  

Ms Jackson says one interaction that stands out for her, is where one woman kept insisting she wasn’t racist but continued using “the N word” during the dinner.

For Ms Rao, she recalls almost being physically assaulted by a white woman after challenging her about the origins of yoga.

“A white lady tried to reach over and grab me by my jacket because I said that white people’s yoga in the western world is cultural appropriation,” she explained.

“They have never been challenged before.”

The women believe the hard-hitting straight forward approach is working and now hundreds of white women are coming forward to book them for the radical dinners to “get well”.

Additionally, Ms Rao wants the film to help families dismiss the idea that the dinner table is not a place to discuss race, politics and serious world issues, especially as we approach the festive season.

She said: “If you can make your dinner table a safe space to talk about all of this stuff it ends because if you start talking about it you have to make changes.”

The women are also authors of a new book called White Women: Everything you already know about your own racism and how to do better.

The book has been very well-received and earlier this month hit the New York Times Best seller list in its first week.

Ms Jackson told The Voice, readers who are women of colour readers are “loving” the book because they are “being seen, affirmed and they are being acknowledged.”

The murder of George Floyd in May 2020, sparked global protests against police brutality, racism and racial profiling and saw the rise in the Black Lives Matter movement.

However, both Ms Rao and Ms Jackson believe a lot of the activism that followed was “performative” and not much has changed in the US for black and brown communities.

Ms Jackson said: “It was all performative, which white people are really good at.”

Ms Rao said she thinks things are worst now and there has been a major pushback in the fight for racial equality.

She said: “This is what the attack of woke culture and the attack against critical race theory is about, it is because of the summer of 2020.

“It is a full war against black, indigenous, brown people in this country and against white people who are actually doing the work – they are coming for everybody.”

Ms Jackson told The Voice, that fatal police shootings involving black people are sadly still a regular occurrence in the US.

She said: “There is not a week that goes by in America where a black person is not shot and killed by the police.

“We just had a boy, 15 years old walking on the highway, they arrested him, they put him in jail and the next day he was dead.

“Police are never held accountable, except for maybe George Floyd.

“They just murder with impunity.”

 The deepening political divide in America hasn’t gone unnoticed with the co-founders and authors.

Ms Rao said: “What we are seeing is a ton of people are going to the dark side, openly becoming Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans.

“Another ton of white folks are becoming silent, even though historically silence has never saved anyone.

“Now what we are seeing is a ton of white folks who do have a sense of history and realise, silence will not save me, silence not save my children and silence will not save humanity.

“They are coming humbly, with open hearts and open minds.”

Ms Jackson also works within schools in the US and says many are now working with other educators who are “going through their programmes” to ensure they can overcome “white supremacy and being committed to humanity for everybody.”

Ms Rao also describes herself as “a work in progress” and says she is “still unlearning” and the work is also for herself.

 She added: “This work is for me every day and for my children, the future generation and humanity.”

The use of the word Karen to describe dangerous acts of white privilege displayed by some white women, has become a popular term for black communities in the US.

For example, when a white woman called Amy Cooper called the police on a black man in Central Park who asked her to put her dog on a leash in 2020, the phrase “Karen” exploded across Black Twitter and social media.

In recent months, the name Karen has been attributed to white women threatening to call the police on black people doing everyday things, like shopping, driving, taking out the garbage or returning home from work.

The popularisation of the word and the negative connotations now associated with it, is believed to have impacted the number of new babies being called Karen.

According to official US between 1951 and 1968, the name “Karen” was extremely popular and was in the top 10 most popular baby names.

But fast forward to 2018, Karen is now ranked at the 635th in most popular names.

This year the name Karen has topped the list of the most-Googled slang terms in nearly half of all American states, according to AI writing tool QuillBot.

Watch the trailer for Deconstructing Karen here:https://youtu.be/eGz63iZ2EeA

Deconstructing Karen out today iTunes and Vimeo!