As has been frequently reiterated, there exist so many cringe-worthy moments with each new viewing of Sex and the City as time wears on. Yet what has perhaps been made clearer the more the years pass is the fact that Charlotte York–the resident “prude” trope of the quartet–was always a Karen. And now that there’s a derogatory name in place for women of Charlotte’s nature, it feels as though something has been “unmasked!” about the character. Yet ironically it was in 2017 that Charlotte was being rebranded as “woke” thanks to a beloved Instagram account called @everyoutfitonsatc. Rewriting some of the show’s more problematic scenes with Charlotte as the one to respond with an “enlightened” attitude about everything from racism to transsexuals, it seems especially odd now, when considering that it’s so obvious Charlotte is the most Karen of them all.
Sure, Carrie and Miranda have their Karen qualities as well (Carrie with her whining selfishness and Miranda with her haircut), but it is Charlotte’s unique Upper East Side privilege, oblivion and, well, Republicanism that makes her the Most Karen of Them All. Of course, maybe this was the entire point of making her “woke” in 2017, at the height of her meme dominance: to show that even the most hopeless of people can change if they are earnest and pure enough in their intentions (though “good” intentions tend so often to pave the road to hell). Charlotte was never as malicious as Karen, per se, yet it is her walking on a cloud of marriage and fine china-obsessedness that makes her fortress of privilege so much more marked compared to the others (yes, even constantly-talking-about-herself Carrie).
There were, granted, some moments when flickers of Charlotte’s compassion for the plight of non-cisgender white women not living in expensive Manhattan apartments could shine through, even if, once again somewhat dripping in the ickiness of her unawareness and overcorrective political correctness. As was the case in one of the most uncomfortable episodes in SATC’s canon, season three’s “No Ifs, Ands or Butts…” in which, for once, Samantha is something of the Karen figure. Being the only episode ever to feature more than one black person (the movie, too, later tried its “best” by adding Jennifer Hudson to the cast), the writers of course chose to make Samantha the one “evolved” enough to have sex with a black man named Chivon (Asio Highsmith). After all, she was the slutty trope, so why wouldn’t she want to try some “big black cock” (yes, this phrase is actually used)? Or “big African American cock,” to Charlotte.
The actress who played Adeena (Sundra Oakley), Chivon’s sister, would herself, almost twenty years later, comment on the laughability of Samantha coming out of the storyline as the more progressive and open-minded one, noting, “Samantha only slept with one black guy in the whole range of the show, in New York City? Okay, sure.” Because yes, apparently one black guy was enough out of six seasons to cover the rainbow of colors that exists in New York. Oh wait, but Miranda did date a black sports medicine doctor, Robert Leeds, for the Knicks for a few episodes. So there’s that. Yet, incidentally, Blair Underwood, who played the latter character, would remark that he was initially offered the part of Chivon and turned it down, explaining, “I said no first, two years prior, because there was an episode [where Samantha] wanted to be with a black man and it was all about the curiosity. What’s it like to be with a black man? Are the rumors true? And I said, ‘Thank you, but no thank you. I appreciate it and I’m honored.’ And I mean that, I don’t take that lightly when people offer you a job. But I said, ‘I’m not interested in being the black curiosity, but thank you.’”
But back to the episode at hand. In which Adeena is the connect to Chivon, thanks to Carrie knowing her cursorily from when Adeena was a food editor, but now owns her own fusion restaurant called, what else, Fusion (because pretty much everything on the show is a cliche of what New York is supposed to “be about”: basicness and trend-chasing). It is while Carrie and her friend are sitting at a table and talking to Adeena that Chivon stops by, catching Samantha’s lecherous gaze. Charlotte is the one to bristle when she interprets Samantha saying, “I’d like to get me some of that” as unwarranted “African American talk” (the PC way she upgrades Samantha calling it “black talk”). Samantha balks at Charlotte’s uppitiness, informing her, “I don’t see color–I see conquests.” Which is even more tone deaf considering how colonialist it sounds (then again, Samantha is a gentrifier of the Meatpacking District so it’s all in line with her character). Yet to the tittering white women at the table who still gossip about boys as though they’re in junior high, this sounds like the height of being non-racist (anti-racist still hadn’t entered the equation, as you know) despite being exactly that. Carrie’s comments on Samantha’s interest come off like she’s a woman of the Silent Generation as she encourages, “You gotta love a fella who loves the jewelry” and “Talk about affirmative action!” The whole hen-like scene is too difficult to stomach in the present.
The crutch the episode falls on for dividing Chivon and Samantha in the end lazily relies on Adeena’s issues with her brother dating a white woman “seriously.” She is painted as the ultimate Angry Black Woman by the denouement of the storyline, which of course takes place in a club where entry requires everyone to be strip searched (in an earlier club scene with Chivon, Carrie had “wittily” narrated, “Although Samantha had been in the New York club scene for years, this was the first time she’d been expected to spread without being offered a cocktail”).
Samantha’s sudden “wokeness” into Chivon’s world (he’s also an A&R executive) even makes her understand that not all rap is the same as she muses, “I thought all rap had a harder edge.” With Chivon, she suddenly sees that it can be “soft.” Alas, Adeena isn’t having any of it, sending Chivon away from the table at Fusion one night under a pretense so that she can privately tell Samantha, “Let’s not get personal here. I’m sure you’re a very nice person, but you’re white. I have a problem with my only brother getting serious with a white woman.” That’s it, that’s her whole explanation. No frank conversation about why she feels that way, or the three-dimensionality behind such sentiments. All designed to make Samantha look like the better person. The ironic non-racist. With Carrie to drive home the point with her voiceover, “Apparently to Adeena, Samantha’s skin was a non-negotiable.”
The scene then transitions into the quartet’s usual brunch gab session in which Samantha indignantly responds, “Talk about politically incorrect, she can’t dis me just because I’m white.” Carrie retorts, “Please tell me you didn’t say dis” (as though that’s the most offensive thing that’s been said this entire episode). Charlotte chimes in with, “Maybe you should stop seeing him. Race is a very big issue.” Rather than stoking the flames, like so many white people end up doing, Charlotte feels the best approach is silence and a fade out on the subject. Why let things get messy when you could simply avoid black people altogether? It’s what they prefer, clearly.
But Samantha persists, showing up to another club Chivon invites her to, at which time Adeena is blind-sided by her presence, rendered into a caricature of the Angry Black Woman even further as she shouts, “I don’t care how many Jennifer Lopez looking dresses you have hanging in your closet [remember, at the time, J. Lo’s ass was the biggest in mainstream pop culture], you don’t belong in here. You can never understand what I’m talking about. This is a black thing.” Thus, the takeaway the episode wants its viewers to have is: it’s not white people’s fault that they don’t speak up when they’re met with this kind of vitriol. Of course they back into a corner and cower away from the deep-seated contention at hand if this is the “thanks” they’re going to get. As though they’re owed gratitude for simply doing the bare minimum, of “taking a risk” on engaging with black people at all.
“Get your little white pussy away from my brother!” Adeena concludes before a physical fight ensues. And she does, all with the belief that she’s the better and bigger person in the “arc” of this narrative. Charlotte/Karen, meanwhile, is just glad that Samantha isn’t involving herself in such a hotbed issue any longer, leaving her free to call the police during a jog in Central Park if she wants to threaten any looming “African American man.” Even if it turned out to be Chivon. But how would she know when Karens think all black people look the same? Or when the closest Charlotte can get to having an “ethnic” friend is an Italian-American gay man.
