Amy Cooper- When lessons aren't learned and you still consider yourself a "victim"

"Central Park Karen" still doesn't understand that she needs to accept responsibility for her actions on that ugly day

I am not the sharpest knife in the knife-thing.

• Jimmy Dore, Citizen Jimmy

One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless.

• Henry Miller, Sextet: Six essays

It was something I found difficult to fathom- Amy Cooper was so freaked out being close to a Black man (Christian Cooper- no relation) that she felt the need to call 911 and report the “incident.” She was in no danger at all, of course…except from her supersized imagination fed by her racism and fear. And her actions have had consequences she couldn’t have imagined.

Three-and-a-half years later, Amy Cooper claims to be “scared to be in public” and “in hiding.” While the only people who know all the relevant facts of the encounter are Ms. Cooper and the person she felt “threatened” by, she seems to have learned nothing from her experience.

A woman dubbed the “Central Park Karen” online after calling the police on a Black birdwatcher, says she is still “in hiding” more than three years after the incident.

Amy Cooper said that she had received an “avalanche of hate and death threats” following the incident in May 2020, and even now was “scared to be in public” and struggles to find employment.

A video of the incident showed Ms Cooper on the phone to police, telling them she was being “threatened” by an “African American man” while she was out walking her dog in New York’s Central Park.

The footage quickly went viral after it was posted by the man, Christian Cooper – no relation – and Ms Cooper was given the online nickname “Central Park Karen”.

I think calling her a “Karen” lumps her into a specific group with a (not necessarily undeserved) lousy reputation and eliminates any opportunity for objective analysis. Labeling her like that makes it too easy to write off Ms. Cooper without evaluating what she did and the reasons behind those actions.

Busted! Yeah, that’s precisely how we win arguments….

Not that I’m supporting what she did; I still think her actions were undeniably and reprehensibly racist. But labeling her eliminates any reason or need to understand why she did what she did.

Unfortunately for Ms. Cooper, her timing was awful.

In an op-ed written for Newsweek, Ms Cooper recalled the incident and said after the video had been posted online that “my life, as I knew it, was over”.

“My employer fired me the day after the incident without ever taking the time to learn the facts. Clearly in survival mode, my company released a strong statement distancing itself from me, effectively blacklisting my career,” she wrote.

“In a frantic and desperate attempt to stop the avalanche of hate and death threats, I issued a public apology at the recommendation of a PR company. But it did nothing. I was forced into hiding.

“Over three years later, I am still in hiding. I am scared to be in public. I still can’t get a job that meets my qualifications. And there have been long stretches of unemployment. All leading to thoughts of self-harm.”

The incident occurred on the same day that George Floyd – a black man – was murdered by police officers in Minneapolis, sparking a national reckoning in the US over racism.

There’s no doubt that what she did was stupid, a ridiculously racist overreaction to a situation that, by all indications, posed no clear and present danger to her…except as defined by her overheated imagination.

Does that mean we get to throw her overboard, effectively cancel her, and render her incapable of salvaging her life and career? Did her employer overreact by cutting her loose and distancing themselves from her?

My sense of this is that Ms. Cooper remains an extraordinarily immature and entitled young woman who still has no understanding that what she did was wrong. She seems to believe that SHE was the one who was wronged- “I still can’t get a job that meets my qualifications.”

Her Newsweek op-ed reads like the whiny stylings of someone who still, three-and-a-half years later, refuses to recognize and accept any responsibility for what happened. In her mind, she’s been attacked, canceled, and tossed on the ash heap of history by a politically correct society that hates people like her- people who only want to do the right thing.

But what about the way she treated Christian Cooper, who, by all indications, had been minding his own business and was “guilty” only of being in the “wrong” place while Black?

Ms Cooper said that there were “never any racial implications to my words” and that she had “only reported exactly what happened to me that day” to the police. She also said that she had been contacted by other people in Central Park who had also been “threatened” by Mr Cooper.

“I was terrified and traumatised,” she wrote. “Even now, when I think about it three years later, the fear quickly wells up in me again.

“I also don’t know why the whole truth was never printed or reported. I can only assume that no one—not even the top-tier media outlets—felt safe from the unrelenting, unforgiving weight of cancel culture. I know that’s why I feared telling my own story for so many years.

“There is no such thing as a ‘Karen.’ We are all just people. Each of us deserving grace and forgiveness. In the end, silencing the truth, the full story, hurts all of us.”

She told her side of the story in the Newsweek op-ed…but used it as a “Why me?” whine-fest. She appears to lack the self-awareness necessary to recognize how her actions and words come across to others. And what of the “other people in Central Park who had also been “threatened” by Mr Cooper?” Why do we only hear of them in general terms and nothing more specific?

Could it be because Ms. Cooper has constructed a reality in her mind that’s far more favorable to her than what the facts gathered by the police and the media indicate? I ask that question in all seriousness; if there’s information that would prove exculpatory and Ms. Cooper wants us to believe her, she should be willing to share it with us. Instead, readers get a “woe is me” recitation of her fear of “the unrelenting, unforgiving weight of cancel culture.”

That’s not how any of this works, Ms. Cooper.

Ms Cooper also added that she had attempted to connect with Mr Cooper directly but had never heard back from him.

“Despite what I’ve endured, I would always be open to an honest, productive conversation,” she wrote.

A footnote to Ms Cooper’s op-ed notes that she currently resides “in an undisclosed location after being at the center of a media firestorm after being dubbed the ‘Central Park Karen’.”

Three-and-a-half years after gaining her “Central Park Karen” nickname, I find it difficult to believe that Ms. Cooper still lives in fear. I think it’s possible to move on, though perhaps not in the way Ms. Cooper would wish. She wants to pick up as if nothing had happened and resume her old life. That’s not going to happen. She blew up her old life via her actions, and she’s still too immature to accept that.

There’s a life out there for her; she has every right to determine what that life might be. But it’s not going to be what she had before. She needs to grow up, accept responsibility for the consequences of her actions, and APOLOGIZE- something that is nowhere to be found in her op-ed.

There’s no remorse or understanding that she’s responsible for what happened that day and why her actions led to her being dubbed “Central Park Karen.” It’s not what others are doing to her; it’s how others are responding to her actions. That’s no slight difference, and until she recognizes and acknowledges that, she’ll remain stuck, spinning her wheels in the cloying mud of her immaturity.

For her sake, I hope Amy Cooper grows up. It’s the only way she’ll get past this sorry episode and make something of her life. But that won’t happen until she accepts responsibility and makes amends.

It’s time for her to put on her big girl pants and stop blaming everyone else for the shit-storm she brought on herself.

Sometimes, the only way through a major league shit-storm of your own creation is to pull up your pants, tighten your belt, put your head down, and start walking through it. It’s going to suck, perhaps for quite a while, but you will get through it. Eventually.

Or you can continue whining about how it sucks to be a “victim.” And you can remain stuck.

Your choice, Ms. Cooper. What’s it going to be?

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