“Karen” has become shorthand for nosy, overstepping and entitled white women over the last few years. Whether it’s calling the police on a Black man birdwatching, Black children selling water or Black travelers entering an Airbnb, white women who assume that unknown Black people in their neighborhoods must be up to no good get the nickname.

On this episode, I sit down with Dr. Kendra Calhoun, a linguist in the anthropology department of UCLA, to talk about the benefits and the downsides of having a cutesy name for a certain brand of racist behavior.