Race2Dinner Documentary Deconstructing Karen Debuts in Denver

“Denver is just too white,” says Saira Rao, the political activist, author, publisher and businesswoman who ran for Diana DeGette’s 1st Congressional District seat in 2018. “We were there for nine years. Beautiful weather, beautiful scenery, some of the best friends I’ve ever made in my life. I found myself there [going] from being someone who thought of myself as a white woman to being a very proud brown woman. But ultimately, being in a place where there’s statistically zero south Asians is a non-starter. It’s a super-liberal blue city, but I’m from Richmond, Virginia, capital of the Confederacy, and I’ve never lived in a place where I experienced more racism than Denver, Colorado.

“It’s the racism of whispers and hushes,” Rao explains. “Ghosting, gaslighting, coming for not just me, but my husband and children. Why? Because I had the gall to challenge Diana DeGette, a white feminist icon of the super-liberal white ladies of Colorado. You can trash Marjorie Taylor Greene and be white women Democrats' favorite. The minute you critique one of them, one of their own, they go full KKK on you."

Strong words, but strong words are the central idea behind Deconstructing Karen, the documentary film about Rao's business and movement, Race2Dinner. The movie will debut in Denver at the Sie FilmCenter on Monday, March 6, at an event that includes Rao and co-author Regina Jackson signing their New York Times best-selling book, White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better. After the film screening, there will be a Q&A with Rao and Jackson, moderated by former mayoral public affairs director Gloria Neal. Tickets for the event are sold out, but a waitlist is open.

Rao, who now lives back in Richmond, is one of the founders of Race2Dinner, which focuses on “initiating radically honest conversations that enable each of us to acknowledge, understand and take personal responsibility for stopping the harm done to ourselves — and to each other.” This mission takes the specific form of a dinner meant to be shared with a group of women, who meet to confront their own too-often-unacknowledged racism and uncover how they might begin to actively fight it within themselves and their communities.

“We’re really excited to debut Deconstructing Karen in Denver,” says Rao, “because that's where we shot the movie. I no longer live in Denver, but Regina does, and the whole story unfolds there.” Whille the film is about Race2Dinner overall, it focuses on one of the first dinners it hosted, at a home in the Hilltop neighborhood. “It was shot a year before George Floyd was murdered," she adds, "so it’s an interesting time stamp.”

Rao and Jackson met during Rao’s congressional campaign in 2018. “Every single event I did,” Rao says, “there was a line of white ladies lined up around the block wanting to tell me, ‘Not me, not me, not all white women.’ They wanted to have drinks and dinner, and I did all that because [I was] running for office.”

But after the campaign ended when incumbent DeGette won the primary, Rao says the requests for dinner, drinks and racial absolution didn’t stop. If anything, the number of requests increased. “Regina had a friend — let’s call her Karen — who in the fall called her up and said, ‘I’m done with Saira; she hates all white people,’ because I’d said that Beto O’Roarke was a white savior. And I’d just donated to his campaign, and if I lived in Texas, I’d vote for him; multiple things can be and are in fact true at the same time. So this Karen says to Regina, ‘I’m done with Saira…but can you arrange for a lunch between the two of us?’ I told Regina, 'No. Not doing that.'

“But I did have a crew of white ladies who’ve also been asking,” Rao continued, “so I said I’d throw this dinner together and she can come along. That’s what we did.” It was the first hard-truth, pull-no-punches meal in what would become Race2Dinner’s company focus. “It was full-on white-woman Broadway musical: crying, angry, arms folded, pacing around the table. I posted about it on Facebook, and it went fully viral.”

That first dinner was in February 2019; four years later, it’s become an international phenomenon. “We were already educating these white people,” Rao says. “We should at least get paid for it. Regina came up with the title of Race2Dinner, and that was it.”

The film came about by way of that initial Facebook post. Rao got a call from Emmy Award-winning producer, director and writer Patty Ivans Specht. “She says she’s been following my campaign, and 'I’m a documentary filmmaker, and I’ve been trying to figure out a way to capture your work,'” Rao says. Specht came out that summer to film one of the dinners. “I think it might have been only the third one we did,” recalls Rao.

Race2Dinner has been growing ever since, hosting dozens of dinners like the one seen in the film in cities both domestic and abroad. Race2Dinner only planned to do only four in 2023, but Rao says that number has already grown to six: London, Denver, L.A., Austin, Palm Beach and Atlanta. And it might soon add Las Vegas to the list.
Media reactions to Race2Dinner have ranged from a Forbes article that calls the work “groundbreaking,” to the American Enterprise Institute labeling it a “Dinner Party From Hell.” For those who have actually read the book or seen the documentary, the response has been “overwhelmingly positive,” says Rao.

And Rao’s experiences at the various dinner tables have been relatively similar. “White womanhood is an institution,” says Rao. “The institution teaches the same behaviors. We always have people who are very upset. Angry. Some who are defensive. Some who are sad. Some who feel guilty. I think the most surprising thing that’s happened is that since the George Floyd murder, there’s been a whitelash — a whole lot of people who don’t want to talk about it. People have gone back into their caves.

“But there’s a small but mighty minority of white women who are actually coming humbly,” Rao says. “Open. Knowing that if they don’t dismantle white supremacy, they, too, will die — that white supremacy inevitably kills everyone, including white people. There are some who’ve figured that out now. That’s been the surprise, this uptick in white women who want to do this, who say, 'I’m not going to cry, and I’m not going to get angry. I’m going to listen and I’m going to unlearn and I’m going to do this work.' And they do it every day, every day."

Deconstructing Karen premieres at 5 p.m. Monday, March 6, at the Sie FilmCenter, 2510 East Colfax Avenue. To get on the waitlist, see the event website. You can also see the film on several streaming platforms.