*(Via Salon) – Oh boy! Amy Cooper — the infamous “Central Park Karen” — clearly has no problem reminding everyone of her infamy.
On Wednesday, it was reported that Cooper is suing her former employer, investment firm Franklin Templeton, for — you guessed it! — racial discrimination. Cooper had her 15 minutes of national attention last year when she called the police on Christian Cooper (no relation), a Black man and birding enthusiast who asked her to leash her dog in a leash-only area of New York City’s Central Park. Mr. Cooper filmed her telling 911 that “I’m being threatened by a man,” which wasn’t true.
While Christian Cooper left before any police arrived, the video was chilling — especially in light of the epidemic of police violence against Black people in the U.S. Quite literally, the incident happened the very same day that Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin calmly murdered George Floyd in full view of a crowd of witnesses. Cooper herself released public statements last year insisting that she is “not a racist” and “did not mean to harm that man,” but nonetheless claiming, “It was unacceptable, and I humbly and fully apologize to everyone who’s seen that video.”
Her firm still let her go.
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Those who were understandably skeptical of Cooper’s “apology” are no doubt vindicated by her lawsuit, in which she claims she “was alone in the park and frightened to death,” a claim that anyone who watches the video has every right to be skeptical of. (It’s worth a rewatch, to be reminded of how calm Amy Cooper is when she threatens Christian Cooper, and how she turns on the “scared” voice when the call to 911 patches through.) She also accuses the bird watcher of being “overzealous,” even though she was the one who had to take a “therapeutic” class on racial bias in order to get the charge of filing a false police report dismissed.
But while Cooper’s arrogance is truly next level, her playing-the-victim lawsuit is emblematic of a wave of white whininess that’s crashing over the U.S. right now, as large numbers of white people — mostly, but not exclusively Donald Trump voters — convince themselves that it’s not racism that is a problem in the U.S., but the bogeyman of white people being victimized by anti-racists.
Get the rest of this Amy Cooper essay by Amanda Marcotte at SALON.
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