task0778
Diamond Member
Amy Cooper was not the internetâs first âKarenâ â the pejorative used for a demanding, entitled white woman. But as the Central Park dog walker who called the police on a black birdwatcher last year, she quickly became the paragon of the archetype. In a video that went instantly viral, we watch as she summons law enforcement to protect her from the man, whose race she mentions three times in a matter of moments: âIâm going to tell them thereâs an African-American man threatening my life.â
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Many accused Amy Cooper of âweaponizing white tears.â They said she was deliberately attempting to sic racist cops on the birdwatcher, Christian Cooper (no relation). Comparisons to Emmett Till were instant. The outcry was overwhelming, and it was supercharged by the mainstream press. The New York Times ran a dozen stories, letters, and Op-Eds in the first week alone. A rattled Gayle King said it felt like âopen seasonâ on black men, with Amy ânearly strangling her dog to falsely accuse another black man.â Trevor Noah said that Amy âblatantly knew how to use the power of her whiteness to threaten the life of another man and his blackness.â
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By the next day, Amy Cooper had been doxxed, had surrendered her dog, had lost her job, and had issued a half-hearted defense followed by an abject apology. Christian Cooper would go on to become a minor celebrity, penning a story for D.C. Comics inspired by the incident, heralded across the media and even by Joe Biden. âYou made an incredible contribution at a very important moment,â the future president said.
BUT:
For starters, there was the Facebook post that Christian shared when he uploaded the original video, which his sister posted on Twitter in the hours after the encounter. In the post, Christian recorded his contemporaneous account of what happened in the moments before the camera started rolling. âLook, if youâre going to do what you want, Iâm going to do what I want, but youâre not going to like it,â Christian recounted himself saying to Amy. He also shared that heâd pulled out âthe dog treats I carry for just for [sic] such intransigence.â
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I had read an embarrassing number of stories and social media takes about this brief conflict. Not a single one of them had mentioned this public Facebook post.
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He threatened her, I thought, stunned. He says himself that he approached her â a woman alone in a wooded area. He tried to lure away her dog. How was this the first time I was reading these details? Had I just missed them in the other stories Iâd read?
Iâm going to do what I want, but youâre not going to like it,â --Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a threat in my book
I started looking at the Cooper coverage more critically. A Washington Post article summarized the conflict this way: Christian Cooper âapproached the dogâs owner early on Monday with a request: Could she leash up the canine, as the park rules required? Amy Cooper said she would be calling the police instead.â The implication of this and most other accounts was that Amy Cooper called the police simply because heâd asked her to leash her dog. And even though the article included a link to Christianâs Facebook post, the text of the article failed to mention the threat at all.
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Why had the Post left it out?
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Then I read a 2,500-word report from the New York Times purporting to be âthe inside story.â Its opening paragraphs offered a detailed account of the conflict â until it came to Christianâs threat. Instead of quoting him, they summarized with: âThey exchanged words.â I couldnât believe it. I wondered briefly if they were even aware of what Christian Cooper had said. Then I found it buried in the storyâs closing paragraphs, long after most readers would have moved on.
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Another question arose as I tried to untangle the facts from the narrative: If the roles of Amy and Christian had been reversed â if she had been a birdwatcher who accosted a dog-walker for running his dog off-leash, if she had confronted him for breaking the park rules, if she had tried to lure his dog away from him with âdog treats I carry for just such intransigenceâ â wouldnât she still be the Karen? In other words: was it her behavior or her identity that had done her in?
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I wasnât the only one who became preoccupied with questions like these.
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Kmele Foster, friend of Common Sense and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast, has spent the past several months reporting this story. For the first time since that viral video, Amy Cooper â who now lives in hiding and is suing her former employer for race and gender discrimination â sat down for an extensive interview. Kmele also uncovered important context lost in the public narrative, including:
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A recording of Christian Cooper at a local community board meeting just days before his encounter with Amy Cooper. âItâs getting super ugly between birders and unleashed dog walkers,â he says. âIâve been assaulted twice so far this spring, people actually putting their hands on me, which really surprises me, because Iâm not a small guy.â
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May 2020 testimony provided by Jerome Lockett, a black man who said Christian had âaggressivelyâ threatened him in the park. Among the details: âwhen I saw that video, I thought, I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way how she may have genuinely been afraid for her life.â He continued, âIf I wasnât who I was, I would of [sic] called the police on that guy too.â
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Lockett also says: âMy two fellow dog owners have had similar situations with this man, but donât feel comfortable coming forward because theyâre white. They think theyâll be seen as some âKarenâ or whatever.â The dispatch from Amy Cooperâs 911 call, which seems to corroborate her explanation that her double reference to Christianâs race to the operator â and the growing hysteria she displayed in the video â was the result of a bad cell phone connection.
.
At first blush, reexamining this conflict would seem to be the definition of a hill not to die on. Amy Cooper, certainly as she appeared in that video, proved an especially easy figure to revile. What personal benefit can come to anyone who publicly tries to understand or empathize with a person so widely hated? So why tell this story? Itâs not because Amy Cooperâs life was destroyed by this video, though that is a tragedy. Nor is telling this story an attempt to deny the existence of racism and its insidious legacy.
.
To tell this story is to address a different set of problems.
.
Among them: our collective intoxication with public shaming. Our willingness to dispense with due process when we think we âknowâ the truth in the absence of evidence. The mediaâs complicity in perpetuating public judgments, even when the facts directly contradict those judgments. The lack of proportion in the punishments meted out to perceived offenders. The absence of any avenue for redemption or reconciliation when a breach has been made. And the mercilessness shown to those at the center of these storms, often leaving them suicidal and broken. (Thankfully, Christian Cooper tried to rein in some excesses of the public reaction: âI donât know if her life needed to be torn apart.â And I hope itâs clear that attacking him isnât part of our purpose here.)
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Surely there will be people who will learn more of the context of the Cooper incident in Central Park and continue to believe that Amy Cooper is a racist. I donât believe the evidence supports that position. But at least they will be coming to that conclusion in light of the evidence, rather than in the absence of it.
bariweiss.substack.com
Am I saying that everything posted above is the real truth? No, I wasn't there. And that is not my point anyway, the point is that too often people jump to conclusions ahead of the facts, which sometimes are not accurate or true as 1st reported. And these days, who can trust the media to tell us the truth about anything? I can't. I can see the media's desire to end racism as a good thing, but they should not let the narrative overrule the truth. They are molding the facts to fit their predetermined narrative, and that is just plain wrong. I believe that America has a large and growing distrust of the media and for good reason. And we are way too quick to accept or deny whatever story we are told without waiting for the truth, depending on how it jives with our politics.
.
Many accused Amy Cooper of âweaponizing white tears.â They said she was deliberately attempting to sic racist cops on the birdwatcher, Christian Cooper (no relation). Comparisons to Emmett Till were instant. The outcry was overwhelming, and it was supercharged by the mainstream press. The New York Times ran a dozen stories, letters, and Op-Eds in the first week alone. A rattled Gayle King said it felt like âopen seasonâ on black men, with Amy ânearly strangling her dog to falsely accuse another black man.â Trevor Noah said that Amy âblatantly knew how to use the power of her whiteness to threaten the life of another man and his blackness.â
.
By the next day, Amy Cooper had been doxxed, had surrendered her dog, had lost her job, and had issued a half-hearted defense followed by an abject apology. Christian Cooper would go on to become a minor celebrity, penning a story for D.C. Comics inspired by the incident, heralded across the media and even by Joe Biden. âYou made an incredible contribution at a very important moment,â the future president said.
BUT:
For starters, there was the Facebook post that Christian shared when he uploaded the original video, which his sister posted on Twitter in the hours after the encounter. In the post, Christian recorded his contemporaneous account of what happened in the moments before the camera started rolling. âLook, if youâre going to do what you want, Iâm going to do what I want, but youâre not going to like it,â Christian recounted himself saying to Amy. He also shared that heâd pulled out âthe dog treats I carry for just for [sic] such intransigence.â
.
I had read an embarrassing number of stories and social media takes about this brief conflict. Not a single one of them had mentioned this public Facebook post.
.
He threatened her, I thought, stunned. He says himself that he approached her â a woman alone in a wooded area. He tried to lure away her dog. How was this the first time I was reading these details? Had I just missed them in the other stories Iâd read?
Iâm going to do what I want, but youâre not going to like it,â --Ladies and Gentlemen, that is a threat in my book
I started looking at the Cooper coverage more critically. A Washington Post article summarized the conflict this way: Christian Cooper âapproached the dogâs owner early on Monday with a request: Could she leash up the canine, as the park rules required? Amy Cooper said she would be calling the police instead.â The implication of this and most other accounts was that Amy Cooper called the police simply because heâd asked her to leash her dog. And even though the article included a link to Christianâs Facebook post, the text of the article failed to mention the threat at all.
.
Why had the Post left it out?
.
Then I read a 2,500-word report from the New York Times purporting to be âthe inside story.â Its opening paragraphs offered a detailed account of the conflict â until it came to Christianâs threat. Instead of quoting him, they summarized with: âThey exchanged words.â I couldnât believe it. I wondered briefly if they were even aware of what Christian Cooper had said. Then I found it buried in the storyâs closing paragraphs, long after most readers would have moved on.
.
Another question arose as I tried to untangle the facts from the narrative: If the roles of Amy and Christian had been reversed â if she had been a birdwatcher who accosted a dog-walker for running his dog off-leash, if she had confronted him for breaking the park rules, if she had tried to lure his dog away from him with âdog treats I carry for just such intransigenceâ â wouldnât she still be the Karen? In other words: was it her behavior or her identity that had done her in?
.
I wasnât the only one who became preoccupied with questions like these.
.
Kmele Foster, friend of Common Sense and co-host of The Fifth Column podcast, has spent the past several months reporting this story. For the first time since that viral video, Amy Cooper â who now lives in hiding and is suing her former employer for race and gender discrimination â sat down for an extensive interview. Kmele also uncovered important context lost in the public narrative, including:
.
A recording of Christian Cooper at a local community board meeting just days before his encounter with Amy Cooper. âItâs getting super ugly between birders and unleashed dog walkers,â he says. âIâve been assaulted twice so far this spring, people actually putting their hands on me, which really surprises me, because Iâm not a small guy.â
.
May 2020 testimony provided by Jerome Lockett, a black man who said Christian had âaggressivelyâ threatened him in the park. Among the details: âwhen I saw that video, I thought, I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way how she may have genuinely been afraid for her life.â He continued, âIf I wasnât who I was, I would of [sic] called the police on that guy too.â
.
Lockett also says: âMy two fellow dog owners have had similar situations with this man, but donât feel comfortable coming forward because theyâre white. They think theyâll be seen as some âKarenâ or whatever.â The dispatch from Amy Cooperâs 911 call, which seems to corroborate her explanation that her double reference to Christianâs race to the operator â and the growing hysteria she displayed in the video â was the result of a bad cell phone connection.
.
At first blush, reexamining this conflict would seem to be the definition of a hill not to die on. Amy Cooper, certainly as she appeared in that video, proved an especially easy figure to revile. What personal benefit can come to anyone who publicly tries to understand or empathize with a person so widely hated? So why tell this story? Itâs not because Amy Cooperâs life was destroyed by this video, though that is a tragedy. Nor is telling this story an attempt to deny the existence of racism and its insidious legacy.
.
To tell this story is to address a different set of problems.
.
Among them: our collective intoxication with public shaming. Our willingness to dispense with due process when we think we âknowâ the truth in the absence of evidence. The mediaâs complicity in perpetuating public judgments, even when the facts directly contradict those judgments. The lack of proportion in the punishments meted out to perceived offenders. The absence of any avenue for redemption or reconciliation when a breach has been made. And the mercilessness shown to those at the center of these storms, often leaving them suicidal and broken. (Thankfully, Christian Cooper tried to rein in some excesses of the public reaction: âI donât know if her life needed to be torn apart.â And I hope itâs clear that attacking him isnât part of our purpose here.)
.
Surely there will be people who will learn more of the context of the Cooper incident in Central Park and continue to believe that Amy Cooper is a racist. I donât believe the evidence supports that position. But at least they will be coming to that conclusion in light of the evidence, rather than in the absence of it.
The Real Story of âThe Central Park Karenâ
New evidence comes to light. And Amy Cooper breaks her silence.
bariweiss.substack.com
Am I saying that everything posted above is the real truth? No, I wasn't there. And that is not my point anyway, the point is that too often people jump to conclusions ahead of the facts, which sometimes are not accurate or true as 1st reported. And these days, who can trust the media to tell us the truth about anything? I can't. I can see the media's desire to end racism as a good thing, but they should not let the narrative overrule the truth. They are molding the facts to fit their predetermined narrative, and that is just plain wrong. I believe that America has a large and growing distrust of the media and for good reason. And we are way too quick to accept or deny whatever story we are told without waiting for the truth, depending on how it jives with our politics.
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