Understanding Amy

Unless you’ve been living on Mars in recent days, you’re no doubt aware of the altercation that took place last week in New York’s Central Park between a white woman, Amy Cooper, and a black man, Christian Cooper. (They are “not related”—that we know of. Wouldn’t it be something if their DNA showed a connection?)

This post is not about that altercation, essentially; it is about my post on Facebook about that altercation. Because I need to clarify (or justify, if you would have it so) something I said about that.

But to summarize (and forgive me for the lack of journalistic form as I use their first rather than last names for obvious reasons): While Christian was bird-watching in a section of the park called “the Ramblings,” where dogs are not allowed off leash, he noticed Amy’s dog diving into the foliage and whatnot (as dogs will do). When he asked her to leash her dog, she refused, so he began to record their interaction on his phone, at which point she demanded he stop, and when he didn’t, she called 9-1-1 and shouted to the dispatcher that she needed help because a black man was threatening her and her dog.

The video taken by Christian has been posted repeatedly by multiple news outlets on Youtube, so go take a look if you need to see “exactly” what happened. You’ll note that Christian is courteous (“Please do”) when she threatens to call the cops—even when she threatens him with “I’m going to call the cops and tell them a black man is threatening my life,” which clearly has not happened, and he remains courteous even after her hysterical plea to the dispatcher of “Help me! I’m being threatened by a black man in the Ramblings!” (He tells her “Thank you” after she ends the call.) I’m not going to post a link here, for multiple reasons that aren’t important; you can find it easily enough.

Initially, I simply posted a link to the video on my Facebook page. Why? I want to be very clear with my answer: I did not do so to vilify Amy. I resent that people are calling her “Central Park Karen” and other names. I am horrified that she has received death threats. I didn’t post that video to pile on. Not at all.

I posted the video because, of my 793 “friends” on Facebook, the vast majority are white. And, sadly, in that group, there are a few folks who still don’t “get” what “white privilege” is, a few folks who still claim that, yes, there are “a few bad apples,” but overall, racism died out long ago. Try as I might, no matter how many blog posts and Facebook comments I make, I can’t seem to convince this small handful of people that, in fact, racism remains a very powerful threat in America. How powerful? Powerful enough that black men like Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd are still losing their lives in modern-day lynchings in this country.

But again, that is not what this post is about, and full disclosure here in case you came upon this page after doing a search for one of the topics or names I’ve tagged in it: I am a white woman with a white daughter and a black daughter and two bi-racial (black and white) sons. This post is about what happened after I posted Christian’s video on Facebook. Sean, a good friend and fabulous teacher with whom I have discussed race issues in the past, commented on the post regarding how discouraged he had become in trying to teach young people about racism. I replied with this:

“Getting people of privilege to ‘get it’ is so, so daunting. And always keep in mind, love, that people like this woman are reacting out of fear… because she has been taught to fear.”

My comment was not well received. A couple of friends—good friends, great people—commented, “She was NOT reacting out of fear….”

Well, but… she was. Yes, folks, I’m right there with you in terms of how horribly she behaved, how his very life could have been at stake by her false accusation. Trust me, I get that. It is something I fear for my own sons all the time as they try to navigate through a world populated by a privileged majority. And yes, yes, I agree! Of course! Racism is still out there (only now it’s filmed), and we should expose it whenever possible. I’m right there with ya. You only need to read my blog (keep scrolling after this post) to see that.

But I feel—agree with me or not—that it is imperative we find a way other than shouting and name-calling to help racists see themselves as they are. I’m pretty sure calling Amy Cooper names and threatening her life is not going to encourage self-examination or self-awareness on her part.

Quick side note here: Yes, Amy Cooper is a racist (despite Christian Cooper stating graciously in an interview that ‘only she knows whether that is true’). Simplest definition I could find online: “Racists discriminate against other races.” Did she? Yes—immediately, without even thinking twice.

You’ll have to trust me on this next bit: I’ve confronted a lot of racists in my day. This is how I used to do it in my youth:

At age 16, I was sitting at the dinner table in a friend’s home when the father of the family made some reference to “niggers.” I responded with this gem: “Ahem. My dad was a nigger.” Not my proudest moment, and I have rarely shared that, for obvious reasons. What a jerk! (Me, I mean. Well, the dad was a jerk, too, and a racist.) Most folks knew my dad had died when I was young. No one knew what he looked like. My skin was dark enough that kids in my neighborhood when I was small called me “nigger baby,” so I just responded in that way to shock the guy. Because I was profoundly offended by what he said, and I wanted to profoundly offend him in turn.

Would that have helped Mr. So-and-so to an epiphany wherein he became open and accepting of all races? Um… no.

We have been shocked and offended by Amy Cooper. Will offending or threatening her in return help her to a similar epiphany? No. No, it will not.

Can we please just try to take a breath and realize that the majority of racists don’t even realize that they are? Yes, I know, blatant white supremacists have become emboldened by persons in power who turn a blind eye to their hatred. I get that. Amy Cooper is not one of those people. She is a white woman with a nasty temper who lashed out from a place of deep-seated fear. Let me clarify: She was not fearful of Christian Cooper or anything he did. She is fearful of black people in general—whether she is aware of it or not.

Case in point: Just before the publication of The Tainted Legacy of Bertha Gifford, I went back through the book, deleting all the parts I thought might hurt my mother. Mom was 91. I wanted the book to bring her closure about her beloved grandmother. I didn’t want it to hurt her or cause yet another rift between us. So I took out the part where she barked at me, “Keep your eyes on your purse!” when she saw that our shuttle driver from the airport in St. Louis was a black man. I also took out the part in which I described her reaction when I got us lost in the rental car one day and we ended up in a predominantly black suburb… and how she literally slid down in her seat to hide, fumbling for the door lock, screaming at me in near-hysterics to “Turn around!” and “Get out of here!” Amy Cooper’s tone in her brief exchange with the 9-1-1 dispatcher was reminiscent of that.

This was my mom, though. Grandma to my children, who loved her, and whom she loved in return.

But… Mom was taught from a young age not to trust black people, to be fearful of them. I was not. Thank all the gods and the Universe that, in my childhood, I never once heard my parents speak ill of anyone of another race. I knew people were “different.” I was never taught that “different” meant “inferior or “dangerous.” Mom and Dad knew what was right and just, and we saw them, as our role models, practice that at home. But taking Mom back to the location of her childhood after she’d been gone for decades triggered that latent, sub-conscious fear in her.

In the decades since being an ass to Mr. So-and-so, I have had a lot of heartfelt conversations with racists. With the exception of my former father-in-law, who told me when my son was an infant that he would never be as smart as my daughter because he was black, the vast majority of racists I have known will eventually (with enough patience and careful listening on my part) admit to some incident in their childhood when they learned to fear black people. Or Mexicans. Or Japanese people because of the racist propaganda distributed by so many (including the U.S. government) during WWII. (Ever done a Google image search of WWII propaganda posters? Take a deep breath first.)

I could write an entire blog post (or book, really) about how fear is the most powerful weapon in controlling people. When fear of certain things, certain people, becomes ingrained in our psyche at a very young age, it is very, very difficult to root out—because, while we may mature and begin to think of ourselves as nice, grown-up people with good manners who treat everyone with decency and respect, it remains there, on a sub-conscious level, until something happens to trigger that fear.

I don’t advocate that you feel sorry for Amy Cooper. I just ask that you attempt to understand what motivated her to do what she did.

As for me, I was a nerdy kid who grew up fascinated by TV and newspaper coverage of current events, so I watched the Civil Rights Movement unfold before my very eyes, and it left a huge impression on the very strong sense of justice I inherited from my father. Thus my intense anger toward Mr. So-and-so or anyone else who crossed my path who referred to others by racial or xenophobic slurs. I’ve never been able to tolerate that sort of thing. Only now, instead of shocking and offending, I really try to consider the source and engage in a conversation that leans more toward enlightenment than further anger and hatred.