Living With Karens

A white woman calls the polıce on her Black neıghbors. Sıx months later, they stıll share a property lıne.

- By Allison P. Davis. Photograph by Kendall Bessent

When it came time to relocate from near D.C. to the New York tristate area, Fareed Hayat thought, I’m certainly going to Brooklyn. It was the summer of 2017. He and his wife, Norrinda Brown Hayat, had both gotten new jobs—he would be teaching criminal law at CUNY, and she had taken a position as the director of the Civil Justice Clinic at Rutgers—and Fareed had dreams of brownstones fueled by a viewing of Spike Lee’s She’s Gotta Have It reboot on Netflix. They considered whether the city could be a suitable substitute for their suburban existence in Maryland, but while looking at homes with their two young sons, the eldest, Kingston, kept asking questions like “Where is the other floor to the house?” and “Are all of the houses just on top of each other?” “He was so extra,” Fareed said.

A few of Norrinda’s new colleagues lived in Montclair, New Jersey, and suggested she look there. Here’s the brochure copy: Only 40 minutes from New York by train. Not suburban, but “urban-suburban.” An art museum there recently hosted a Kara Walker exhibit. Stephen Colbert is on the board of the annual film festival and still lives in town. Oh, and did you hear the rumor about the swinger parties? Parts of it are very affluent—Upper Montclair has been ranked as the wealthiest community in New Jersey. It leans heavily Democratic and has great restaurants, great public schools, a young Black mayor, and a really cute pie shop. And the kicker: Montclair is 24 percent Black.