Where Does the Complete Truth Lie
Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper and the ugly, viral, white-Black encounter
Amy Cooper took a figurative beating in the court of public opinion, in her career and emotionally, psychologically and financially. The verdict: She was a bad person and was the reason for her pain and suffering, because she did it to herself.
Is that conclusion and social judgment true?
Maybe you have suffered this type of experience too. Was the critics judgment accurate? Were the consequences just or unjust?
Let’s look at the backstory of a new article that was just published:
Three Years Later, ‘Central Park Karen’ Details ‘Unforgiving Weight’ of Cancel Culture, was written by Haley Strack for the National Review.
You might remember this “Central Park Karen.” Let’s first talk about what was reported, then and now and then break it down.
“New Yorker Amy Cooper accused a black birdwatcher of threatening to poison her dog three years ago — a decision she still suffers from, the middle-aged white woman said in a recent Newsweek op-ed.
“Amy… unleashed her dog in Central Park in 2020. Christian Cooper yelled at her to re-leash her dog, and said, ‘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,” Strack writes.
“(Christian) Cooper tried to lure her dog in with a treat, and Amy feared that he would try to poison her dog,” Strack communicated. “In a now-viral interaction, Amy called police and told them that an ‘African American man’ was ‘threatening’ her,” Strack writes.
“Christian taunted me to call the police. Seeing no other choice, I called 911 and described the man who was threatening me…,” she said. “The 911 tape makes it very clear that the dispatcher couldn’t hear me due to the poor connection—yet this fact went unreported, skewing perceptions of my actions. There were never any racial implications to my words. I just felt raw fear, and desperately wanted help,’” Cooper claims.
“The incident happened on May 25, 2020, the same day as George Floyd’s death (murder). Amy was accused of racism and promptly fired by her employer, the investment firm Franklin Templeton,” Strack reports.
“Everyone believed and amplified one story: That a white ‘Central Park Karen’ called the police on an innocent Black man, a bird watcher, because of the color of his skin,” Amy Cooper says. “Today, I want you to read and understand the whole story. Not just what the media told you. And after you assess both sides — please tell me — was my never-ending cancel-culture sentence a just verdict?”
She described what she endured:
“All my personal information was released online. I received many hundreds of threatening graphic images, death threats, and hate mail, which continues to this day,” Cooper communicated. “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.”
“The truth was never reported,’ she claimed.
“No one — not even the top-tier media outlets — felt safe from the unrelenting, unforgiving weight of cancel culture,” Amy Cooper remembered.
“I know that’s why I feared telling my own story for so many years,” she said. “So, the next time you feel like telling someone to kill themselves after watching a two-minute video, know there is likely far more to the story — no matter what the claims.”
On a related note, Cooper lost a lawsuit against her former employer in which alleged that she was illegally fired and portrayed as a racist.
US District Judge Ronnie Abrams rejected Cooper’s claim “that she was defamed when Franklin Templeton terminated her one day after the viral interaction with Cooper.
Cooper said that the company and chief executive Jenny Johnson manipulated the situation and asserted Cooper was a “privileged white female ‘Karen’” by releasing statements about firing her.
How shall we take this story with what we have seen and-or heard and what Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper have said happened? Are only one of them worth believing or is this a non-binary question, debate and reality.
Amy Cooper has quite the story. We saw, heard and read about what Christian Cooper relayed or showed us. It’s a difficult situation if you want to know the facts (all of them), evidence, proof and reality. All that matters.
Stories and angles can become popular even if they conceal and mislead or attempt to shine a bright, wide light on what really transpired. It’s plausible Amy Cooper is egregiously might be trying to mold a different narrative, a false one. Or she could be attempting to tell more of the truth that the public has not yet heard. Christian Cooper might have told and shared the full, factual truth or he might have conveniently, strategically omitted critically-important evidence that Amy Cooper would like publicly known.
Different people, for different reasons (some logical, some emotional and some, both) will see, perceive and judge this encounter differently. Not everyone can be correct in their analysis, conclusion and reaction or measured response. Some people are going to be incorrect. That’s reality. Some are going to be correct, not just because of their emotions but through intellectual humility and sound thinking and accuracy.
It’s important, I contend, that we pause and consider, if there is more unknown that could be revealed that could show us a more vivid, focused, clear story to challenge our conclusions, judgment and character.
Is Amy Cooper, for all that has been learned, even worse a person for now trying to deceive or, even if she is judged unlikable, really trying to tell truth that people, infected with confirmation bias, don’t want to learn?
Michael Toebe is a reputation consultant, advisor and communications specialist at Reputation Quality, assisting individuals and organizations with further building reputation as an asset or ethically protecting, restoring or reconstructing it.
Subscribe for free or become a paid subscriber to receive and access “extras,” whichever works best for you.