Christian Cooper, Birdwatcher

Innocence, gentleness, accusation, and revelation

In the last weeks since George Floyd’s death — a very painful and wearying time— I’ve been thinking a lot about Christian Cooper, the Central Park birdwatcher, and how a White woman’s baseless accusations put him in a situation reminiscent of the Central Park 5 and even Emmett Till.

Racial Recklessness

The call Amy Cooper made after Christian Cooper asked her to follow the law (put a leash on her dog) is one that hearkens back to calls that used to get Black men lynched. Perhaps with a different police unit responding, or with a group of Black men, or in a different city, this call might have turned out to be just that. Luckily, Christian Cooper was spared — and his filming of the incident went viral, causing Amy to be held accountable for her racial recklessness.

Loss of Humanity

What came of this incident was not that Amy Cooper could not see Christian Cooper’s humanity as a Black man, but rather how Amy Cooper has been robbed of her own humanity as a result of racism. Racism projects this upon the “other.” What came of this incident is that we all have come to see, in the example of Amy Cooper, how racism robs us all of humanity.

Racial Socialization

The same accusation that got Emmett Till lynched in 1955 is the one that Amy Cooper tried to use on Christian Cooper — and to what end, might we think? Only someone heartbreakingly unaware of the history and memory that Black people in America carry could make use of such a devastating trope today… in 2020. She pulls from deep racial socialization as dominant (as white) and victim (as a woman) and he pulls from the opposite spectrum of that deep socialization. The instantaneous nature of her actions shows how deep-seated racial bias is. She was pulling from a deep subconscious place that tells us what to do when we’re in distress. And yet she did know what it was she was doing — very intentionally weaponizing race. It’s both implicit and intentional, a combination which told her to use her racial power and gender victimization over a Black man to get her way, a sign of clear and deep implicit bias. She placed him within a stereotype where he could go nowhere, be no one, except who she told him he could be.

All of this is particularly mind-boggling when thinking about the unassuming, mundane actions of Christian Cooper — he was birdwatching, for goodness’ sakes! What made Amy Cooper take this step that could have been a drastic and devastating one for Christian? She says it was fear, that she was afraid. But the reality is that, although the coronavirus pandemic and social distancing guidelines hold strong in New York City, she flashed her phone at him, pointed her finger at him, and rushed towards him to put her finger in his face. Her words and actions show she was assertive and angry, not scared and concerned for her safety. Fear would have made her take her dog and run, not drag her dog towards Christian ( choking the dog in the process), get up in his face, and proclaim to him how afraid she was.

White Privilege

No, what Amy Cooper felt and knew that day was that she could — she can — leverage her position as a White woman in a way that would make the cops perceive her as uniquely vulnerable to this Black man, and leverage his Blackness against him in a way that would leave him uniquely vulnerable to the cops. What she felt and knew was that a minor inconvenience to her should be punished with the force of the law — and maybe worse. She felt and knew that she could demonstrate her power over and above his rights as a citizen in the park, over the law, over his humanity.

Of course, Amy Cooper can say “I’m not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way. I think I was just scared. When you’re alone in the Rumble, you don’t know what’s happening. It’s not excusable, it’s not defensible.” It’s a common misconception about racism — that it’s intentional, conscious. It rarely is. The subconscious bias and stereotypes we hold are released in our words and actions, and they create a certain impact, no matter what we intend.

Amy Cooper says, “I hope that a few mortifying seconds in a lifetime of forty years will not define me in his eyes and that [Christian Cooper] will accept my sincere apology… Everyone thinks of me in a lower light and I understand why they do.” Does she know, though? This sounds dismissive to me.

Where The Healing Begins

To get to a place in life where we can reflect goodness and anti-racism and no prejudice, we must do the work to get there. We must work on our own racial identity. We must dialogue with others. Learn about others. Engage with others. Accept others for who they are, who they say they are, and the reality they live. We must dissect bias and stereotypes until we have eradicated it — until our subconscious reveals what we really do intend and hope for one another as human beings.

White people who haven’t done that work are robbed of their humanity because they are inflicted with the sickness of racism. People of color are robbed of their humanity because white people who haven’t done the work of dismantling racism inflict the consequences of their power onto people of color. Just as the Central Park 5 were men of color falsely accused of a vicious assault in Central Park in 1989 who lived years of their lives in prison for a crime they didn’t commit, Amy Cooper’s actions could have inflicted a similarly unjust fate to Christian Cooper in that same park 31 years later.

The fate she was willing to set up for Christian is what sadly actually happened to George Floyd, who was brutally murdered that same night in Minneapolis at the hand of four police officers.

The healing begins within. For Amy Cooper, for Derek Chauvin and the other officers that murdered George Floyd, and for every single person in this world who has internalized racism, it is not the outward journey of apology and appearance that will change lives, but the inward journey of uprooting those deep-seated racial biases that rear their ugly head when we least expect it. Let’s hold each other accountable to taking that inward journey and changing from the inside out. However, first we must hold ourselves accountable.