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Black man: "Please don't come close to me."
White Woman: "I'm taking pictures and calling the cops."
Black Man: "Please call the cops. Please call the cops."
White Woman: "I'm going to tell them there's an Afro-American man threatening my life!"
The video of the suffocation and death of George Floyd opened eyes. Things are worse for Black Americans than some of us thought.
There was an earlier video. It tells the story that some Americans knew all along that things are worse for Black Americans.
The police were her weapon.
The video is likely familiar to most readers. It offers a view of the context for police assumptions and profiling, and it comes a few days before release of the George Floyd death video. Here we have two educated middle class Americans, both armed with technology, hers to call the police, his to record the interaction.
The dangerous Black man. Her behavior reveals an understanding of race and policing in America. The event happened in the moment, in real time. It reveals her unspoken assumption of her privilege and its opposite, the assumption that a Black man will be perceived as the "bad guy" in an encounter. She knew police will come running when they hear there is a Black man threatening a woman, and framed that way they will believe her and do what they do to Black men. She twice tells the police dispatcher that she is being threatened by an Afro-American man. The second time she inserts a tone of panic in her voice. Now she has the ideal framing for the encounter when police arrive to assess the situation. The video shows her looking at him to see if he registers how afraid he should be.
One can easily imagine how this could have played out. Police are told there is a dangerous assault in progress. They arrive to stop a presumed crime in process, ready to use force, possibly deadly force, to detain, handcuff ,and arrest the male, Christian Cooper. If that happens, he begins a slow system of booking, arrest record, detention, bail, processing, and then he has a difficult legal situation, with her potential testimony and the evidence of the 911 recording.
The female, Amy Cooper, no relation, has a dilemma. She either sticks to her story to justify her police report, or backs off it and is revealed to have made a false police report, a crime. She may not be able to leave this as a "misunderstanding," never mind. If the original police encounter involves roughing up the man, then both police and Amy Cooper need to justify the nature of the arrest. This could go very badly for Christian Cooper. Amy Cooper appears to know the score, thus her confidence in weaponizing the police against a Black man telling her to leash her dog, and then recording her. She would sic the police.
In this case, she fails to understand the whole story. Christian Cooper did not stop recording as she had demanded. He has the tape. His voice sounds confident that he would be treated as a "citizen" with rights and presumptions of innocence, not as a "thug." No surprise there: he is a Harvard graduate and therefore accustomed to a certain amount of credibility and privilege. He is a writer, a board member of a bird watching group. She profiled him by race and gender. She did not profile him by socioeconomic status. He has social capital. And he had the tape.
Believe women. Amy Cooper also put a spotlight on #BelieveWomen and #MeToo. She damaged them. We could see that he wasn't threatening her; she told police dispatchers he was, with fabricated panic. She lied.
White women have privilege in encounters of this kind. "Why would a woman lie," Democrats ask? She lied because it gave her power in an encounter with a man telling her she needed to leash her dog. Amy Cooper's lie does not mean that Tara Reade or Christine Blasey-Ford or Stormy Daniels lied. But it does put the lie to the notion that women don't lie about assaults to gain advantage. They sometimes do.
White women have privilege in encounters of this kind. "Why would a woman lie," Democrats ask? She lied because it gave her power in an encounter with a man telling her she needed to leash her dog. Amy Cooper's lie does not mean that Tara Reade or Christine Blasey-Ford or Stormy Daniels lied. But it does put the lie to the notion that women don't lie about assaults to gain advantage. They sometimes do.
We saw it happen.
9 comments:
There’s another side to the Christian Cooper versus Amy Cooper story:
Christian Cooper threatened Amy Cooper’s dog. Here’s his description of the encounter (emphasis added):
“ME: Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it.
“HER: What’s that?
“ME (to the dog): Come here, puppy!
“HER: He won’t come to you.
“ME: We’ll see about that…” before adding, “I pull out the dog treats I carry for just for such intransigence. I didn’t even get a chance to toss any treats to the pooch before Karen scrambled to grab the dog.
“HER: DON’T YOU TOUCH MY DOG!!!!!
What do you think he meant by “you’re not going to like it?” Sounds threatening to me.
https://nypost.com/2020/05/26/christian-cooper-recounts-amy-cooper-incident-before-video-footage/
"White Women are the New Racist Stereotype"
The Central Park incident is just the most recent of white women making news for calling the cops on black people. The May 29, 2020 NPR podcast "On the Media" as well as CNN and others have taken up the cry-- white women are the new racist stereotype being called out by activists. In the first piece entitled "Who is 'Karen' and Why Does She Keep Calling the Police on Black Men?", Prof. Apryl Williams from the University of Michigan says that white women are historic malignancies in the lives of black men, from the era of lynchings to contemporary cell phone calls to 911 on the flimsiest of fears or offenses. She argues that 911 for quick calls to police was invented so white women can quickly call the police on black men. The second piece entitled "The Weaponization of White Womanhood" is based on research and writing by Prof. Jessie Daniels from City University of New York and her new book Undoing White Womanhood.
This is not a critique of rural white women, but of educated, elite and privileged women. The stereotyping is of white women in blue cities, New York and San Francisco in particular. As we know, the largest explosion of racial rage against whites is against solid Democratic cities where from the state to the local level all are controlled by Democrats. Black protestors are livid at their treatment by Democratic power structures that control employment, education, housing, municipal services and policing. White women are well represented in the public institutions that blacks say are systemically oppressing them. But individual white women having blacks arrested on "trivial" or "fictitious" matters, the two activist professors say, is at epidemic levels.
White women as the racist enemy is dovetailing into the hysteria fueling calls to "defund" and "dismantle" police departments in cities with high arrest rates of black men. A corollary is that white people should not call the police even if they are crime victims if the crime itself is non-violent. If fewer whites call the police then fewer blacks will get arrested, and hence fewer will be abused by police and incarcerated. As Minneapolis City Council president Lisa Bender explained, calling the police just because you are a crime victim may be a racist act. Her well publicized tweet is:
"If you are a comfortable white person asking to dismantle the police I invite you to reflect: are you willing to stick with it? Will you be calling in three months to ask about garage break-ins? Are you willing to dismantle white supremacy in all systems, including a new system?"
Women have already seen their "always believe the women" win on #MeToo was illusory, eviscerated by Democrats supporting Joe Biden. And now this white women as racists narrative will be added to it. Both obviously threatens to offend a core constituency of our party-- white women-- when we need them most in the upcoming effort to unseat Donald Trump.
Yes, Michael, she might have thought that threatening.
But she was drawing closer to him, and he was warning her to stay back. When she made the call, and based on the content of the call, she was implying that she was under attack. That was dishonest. He was the one that she was approaching. She wasn't acting like she was threatened. She was making the threat.
To my eye, that is what made it dishonest.
IF he had been approaching her. IF, he were making threatening moves, then possibly it was a matter of her feeling legitimately threatened when she called it in. But those conditions aren't met. Indeed, the opposite.. The condition that was IN FACT met,is that she playacted an increasing threat in her second telling to the dispatcher, amping it up, contrary to the reality on the ground, that he was passive, calm, standing in place, and urging police involvement, which is contrary to him being the physical threat she reported.
Peter Sage
The ability to empower ordinary people to shine the light on systemic injustice surely offsets technology's many other sins. Just search youtube for "police", "harassment", "racial profiling" or any similar terms. you can spend days watching. What's interesting is how much harassment or - worse - in any situation continues even when they know they are being recorded. Like Amy Cooper, it's almost like in that moment they are their true selves and can't see what they are doing until afterwards.
Every time I see liberals or Democrats or the New York Times call white women 'Karen' or 'Becky,' I imagine a few more white women deciding to vote for Trump.
Then I imagine the wails and disbelief when exit polls show a majority of white women voting for Trump this November.
Happy Gay Pride Month Curt.
I think it's a stretch to link this incident to the #metoo dynamic. We should be careful to not connect dots that aren't there.
The unanswered question is whether or not this woman actually felt threatened of if she was trying to intimidate someone who embarrassed her. It's really hard to say because the extreme reaction could be the result of panic.
Did she escalate in fear, or as a racist act? Is it safe to assume she would have acted the same if the man had been Caucasian? Using the term African American, which interestingly is PC, injects race into the situation but we can't be sure of her motive. She didn't say "threatening my life", on the call as she said to him before dialing, only "threatening", which is an important distinction and so it does seem that she was aware of the difference. Even so it is possible to perceive a threat when none exists and this woman can be forgiven if her fear was sincere.
I would also like to believe that if I found myself in a situation where I was causing such a reaction I'd back off...that he didn't is a commentary on empathy and compassion. This is yet another aspect of the toxic nature of race in our society. It seems that both individuals reverted to stereotype.
One other point: The man was attempting a sort of "citizen's arrest", and while nothing like the tragedy in Georgia, highlights the dangerous consequences of citizens policing each other without authority. His offering of the dog treats is concerning in this regard.
It seems like this encounter became uncivil really quickly. As a witness to a number of bar fights I have learned that it simply takes two wrong people in the wrong place at the wrong time to trigger an altercation. These situations are the unfortunate clash of two personalities who should never be in proximity in the first place. We all know that folks who go through life looking conflict usually will find someone like minded who will indulge them.
Anonymous one above isn’t looking at his words through the eyes of a dog owner. Most owners are very strict about what their dog eats and who feeds them. That was the intent of his comment “you aren’t going to like it.” He was planning on feeding the dog a treat. Again the context is stranger, Afro-american, male talking to me and TELLING ME what the rules are. It’s perfectly clear she felt entitled to do whatever she wished regardless of the rules.
Let’s tell the truth: the white woman felt threatened because the large black man was not submissive to her privileged demands. Remember the plot of “To Kill A Mockingbird”? Thad provides the historical background. The comments on what each participant probably felt miss the point. Obey the damn rules. Keep your dog on the leash. Don’t make false reports to the police. ‘Nough said.
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