Joy Reid ignored black woman abusing boy to avoid being a Karen

DAILYMAIL.COM • 3h ago

By ALEX HAMMER, US MEDIA CORRESPONDENT Updated: 20:01 12 Oct 2026

Joy Reid said she avoided calling the police on a black woman who brutally slapped her young son at a mall because she didn’t want to be a ‘white Karen.’

The progressive commentator, 57, said the drama began after she came across the youngster lost and frightened after being separated from his mom at a local mall.

The trip took a turn almost immediately after – after the former cable news host laid witness to the woman slapping the child for wandering, she said Sunday.

The sight left her stunned, Reid told guest Jacque Reid on her web show, Reid This Reid That. The two are not related.

Reid recalled offering the mother, a fellow black woman, a curt ‘ma’am,’ before moving on.

‘It was all I could do,’ Reid said – framing the other option as ‘go full white woman and full white Karen and call police on this lady.’

‘I was like, I’m not a person that calls police on black people,’ Reid told her guest.

She set the stage by detailing how she and her daughter, Winsome Reid, had been taking a trip to a ‘bigger’ mall than the one they usually frequent, to find clothes for a fast-approaching family get-together.

She called the early part of the excursion ‘perfect.’

‘All of a sudden, out of the crowd, I hear a voice screaming “Mommy.”‘

The voice belonged to a ‘little black boy. The cutest little thing ever,’ Reid recalled.

The youngster had somehow lost sight of his mother, and Reid sought to comfort the boy and amass information.

‘Girl, the mama in me kicked in immediately,’ she told her guest. ‘He’s already panicking and crying.

‘So, I’m walking and I said, “Don’t worry about that. Let’s just find your mom.”

‘”Okay, it’s a grown-up store? Could it be this store?”‘ she remembered herself saying. ‘We pass this store. We’re walking.’

Soon, the group came across a kiosk that Reid correctly guessed housed a phone to call mall security.

As the kiosk counter worker was ‘reaching for the phone’ to do so, Reid said the boy’s mother was searching in the next store.

‘He’s still crying – she comes bee-lining at us. This black woman – dark complexion, black woman – comes bee-lining for us.’

‘And I’m thinking, “Thank you, Jesus. God is good.”

‘But, baby – she comes right at us yelling,’ Reid continued, leaving her guest shocked.

And I freeze because he says, “Mommy.” and before he can get the -ommy out, she open hand slaps this boy across his face with so much force that we all jumped.

‘The man behind the kiosk jumped. Winnie jumped. I jumped. She smacked that boy like he was a man.’

Reid said she told the boy’s mother her son was ‘just scared.’

‘And she gets flustered, because she realizes that this is not a black mother that supports beating your kid.’

The altercation ended with the mother ‘yelling’ at the child and the two parties parting ways.

‘My heart is pounding. Like I was so stressed out,’ Reid recalled, describing the rest of the day as ‘ruined.’

‘This lady open hand slapped this little boy like he was a man who had hit her first.’

‘Even if I could say the relief is what caused her to just react, her violent reaction means to me she’s violent,’ Reid continued, while also conceding the boy appeared to ‘want’ to be with his mom.

‘So, it’s not like she’s somebody that he didn’t want to be back with, cause he was screaming for her.

‘So, I don’t really know what- I just feel like I felt inadequate in that moment. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to call the cops on her and be a whole Karen. I didn’t really know what to do.

‘I just I just tried to reason with her and she went away. She thanked me and she went away. And I felt like there was nothing else I could do.’

Reid was fired from MSNBC in February of last year after her ratings fell from a high of three million viewers per episode in her first year on the air, in 2020, to a low of 1.1 million.

She has since started a Substack and show on her YouTube channel – joining figures like Wajahat Ali, Jim Acosta and Don Lemon in doing so.

She rankled brass at MSNBC, since renamed MS NOW, via a steady stream of social media posts that often referenced Israel, sources previously told The Daily Mail.

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