A White Woman Has Apologized After Calling Police On A Black Man And Saying 'there's An African Amer

Ganjababy

Well-Known Member
How Karen became a meme, and what real-life Karens think about it

Karen Sun is a far cry from the "Karen" meme that has spread widely over social media in recent years.

Aside from a shared first name, Sun -- a 23-year-old Chinese-American -- doesn't exactly match the stereotype of a middle-aged, middle class white woman who, to use Sun's words, acts like she "can get whatever she wants."

But Sun, who has spent years working in the fast food industry, has encountered their fair share of "Karens."

And many have. A "Karen" is generally defined as someone who throws a tantrum at a Starbucks. Who asks to speak to the manager over the slightest inconvenience. Who uses tears to get what she wants. It's also someone who calls the police on black people for, say, asking that they leash their dog in Central Park.

The term has people divided. Some have said it's sexist. Others say it's a placeholder for speaking about the casual racism and privilege exhibited by some white women.

But where do these terms come from, and what do they represent? And what does it mean for people of color, people like Sun, who find themselves sharing a name with this stereotype?

HOW THE TERM "KAREN" GOT STARTED


Though these names have recently become popularized, thanks to the cultural force of Black Twitter, these names aren't anything new.

It's not just "Karen," of course. There are also names like "Becky," which has also come to symbolize a certain stereotype of whiteness. And Susan. And Chad.

André Brock is an associate professor at Georgia Tech, and he's spent years studying the intersections of race and digital culture.

Modern iterations of these names come from entertainment, he said. Even comedian Dane Cook, in a bit from 2005, used "Karen" as the butt of a joke, as a placeholder for the friend no one actually liked.

Brock also referenced Sir Mix-A-Lot's hit song from 1992, "Baby Got Back" as an example. The intro to the song famously begins with a reference to an unknown "Becky," insulting an unnamed Black woman: "Oh, my God, Becky, look at her butt. It is so big. She looks like one of those rap guys' girlfriends."

And who could forget Beyoncé's iconic "You better call Becky with the good hair" line from her album "Lemonade" in 2016?

But the history goes back even further. Black folks, he said, have also had names for white people who wanted to be in charge but didn't actually have any control over them.

Miss Ann is one example, from the time of slavery. It was a name Black slaves would use specifically to refer to white women who wanted to exert power over them -- power that they didn't actually have, Brock said.


So though the names have changed now -- we've largely replaced "Miss Ann" with "Becky" and "Karen" -- the idea behind the names is still the same.

The pattern of using these basic names has continued. In 2018, after a white woman called the police on a group of Black folks barbecuing in a public park, the term "BBQ Becky" was coined. In 2020, when Amy Cooper called the police on a black man in Central Park who asked her to put her dog on a leash, the phrase "Karen" abounded on social media.

"It's always about the gaze," Brock explained. "And the desire to control what's in the gaze."

In other words? It's about a desire by some white women to exert control over black folks -- just as it was during slave times, just as it was in 1992 and just as it persists today, he said.


Names like Karen, or Becky? It's an act of resistance by Black folks, Brock said. It puts a name to the behavior and acts as a way to gain solidarity over an injustice, maybe laugh about it and go about your day.

WHAT A "KAREN" SYMBOLIZES

For the term "Karen," part of its appeal is that this name exists, for the most part, in antiquity. And in that respect, it a potent moniker for someone decidedly out-of-touch.

Just look at baby name data from the Office of Social Security. Between 1951 and 1968, the name "Karen" saw its peak -- sitting pretty in the top 10 for the most popular baby name in the US.

But in 2018, the most recent year available, "Karen" was ranked at 635th in most popular names, quite the fall from grace.

"Karen is a name no one would name their kid anymore," Lisa Nakamura, the director of the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan, said bluntly.

So the use of a name like "Karen," Nakamura explained, is part of locating someone, and their actions, in a regressive time period.

The phenomenon is exhibited by the "BBQ Becky" incident back in 2018, the viral video showing how a white woman called the police on a group of black people barbecuing in a public park, claiming they were breaking the law. In the beginning of the video, the woman asserts herself, but by the end, when the police come, she bursts into tears, saying, "I am being harassed."

White women -- "Karens" specifically -- are able to garner sympathy for displaying their fragility, Brock explained, taking away from the focus that they did something wrong and would be called out for it.


"They're getting away with a behavior that no one else would," he explained.

HOW KARENS FEEL ABOUT THE TERM

So how do actual people named Karen feel about this?

Sun told CNN no one has ever seriously called them a "Karen." Sure it comes up, they said, and sometimes they use it jokingly. But they don't think it's a slur at all.

"There's no real systemic oppression there," they said. "It won't prevent you from getting married, or getting health care, you're just acting entitled and rude and that's why you're getting called a 'Karen.'"

Still, Sun noted that having the name Karen has had some impact on the way they navigate the world, at least the way they choose when to speak up.

Karen Shim, a 23-year-old based in Philadelphia, has had a similar feeling.

Though she knows any memes or comments aren't directed at her specifically, she said it can still feel a little personal -- if only because it's her name.

Now, Shim said she might be less comfortable speaking up in certain situations, out of fear that someone might, even jokingly, poke fun at her "Karen" move.

But Shim, who is Korean and Chinese, also said her name isn't the first thing people would probably judge her by -- that would be her race, she said.

Sun agreed.

"There's already a way I move in the world, as someone who is queer and not white," they said. "Even with the name association, it adds another layer, but I'm not necessarily defined by that layer."

Karen Chen, a 20-year-old based in North Carolina, told CNN that though the association of her name with the stereotype makes her slightly uncomfortable, she said she's fine with its use.

"I know that obviously it's just a name, and this is in no way representative of me and how people think I am," she said.

More than the name itself, what actually bothers Chen are the implications of the actions of a "Karen," and how the use of their privilege can come at the cost of marginalized groups.

Brock, though notably not named Karen, summed it up like this: "If you get offended by an archetype, that says more about your insecurities being a liberal ally, than it does about the people who use that word to describe an unjust situation."

In other words, you can be a Karen without being a "Karen."
https://apple.news/AiCuf2rZlT9OYpFKbPcgQ9A
 

Kanky

Well-Known Member
There may be an Amy Cooper law. :lachen:


ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants state lawmakers to pass a bill next week making it a hate crime when 911 callers make a false accusation based on race, gender or religion.

The legislation, first introduced in 2018 and carried by Assemblyman Felix Ortiz (D-Brooklyn), was rejuvenated last month by a now-viral incident in Central Park showing Amy Cooper, a white woman, calling the cops on a black manafter a harmless dispute over her dog.

“We’ve seen 911 calls which are race-based, false calls. A false 911 call based on race should be classified as a hate crime in the state of New York,” Cuomo said during his now-daily briefing in Albany Friday.

He’s added it to a list of law enforcement reform policies he’s supporting when the Legislature returns to session in Albany Monday.

https://nypost.com/2020/06/05/cuomo...ccusation-bill/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
 

awhyley

Well-Known Member
Well doggy is on his own. She has issues. Anyone read on how she stalked an lied on a guy that didn’t want to date her, She made his life hell.

Link pls? I'd like to research the matter.
 

Transformer

Well-Known Member
Link pls? I'd like to research the matter.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/28/amy-cooper-once-slammed-friend-for-voting-for-obama/

A white dog-walker, who called 911 on a black manwhen he asked her to leash her cocker spaniel in Central Park, allegedly stalked a former love interest and chided him for voting for President Barack Obama, The Post has learned.

Martin Priest, a former friend of Amy Cooper who’s known her since 2003, claimed that when he told her he voted for Obama, the first black president of the United States, she slammed his decision, saying she couldn’t “believe” it.

Priest claimed the asset manager developed romantic feelings for him and began “stalking” and “harassing” him when those feelings went unrequited, leading him to report her to the police twice, once in New Jersey and once in New York City. The Post confirmed that reports were made in both jurisdictions.

“The longer I avoided her, the angrier she got,” Priest alleged.

The Post has made multiple attempts to contact Cooper about these allegations, including calling her, asking her doorman to relay a message and leaving messages for her previously retained attorneys. All requests have gone unanswered.

Cooper rose to international infamy Monday when she was caught on camera telling Christian Cooper, a black birdwatcher, she was going to tell the police an African American man was “threatening my life” after he asked her to leash her dog inside the Central Park Ramble.

The move, which earned her the moniker “Central Park Karen,” was lambasted as blatant racism by Mayor Bill de Blasio and is under investigation by the city’s Commission on Human Rights.

Amy Cooper eventually filed a lawsuit, which has since been dismissed, against Priest back in 2015 alleging he was an ex-boyfriend who bilked her out of $65,000 after an alleged torrid love affair with her and two other women.

Priest said the allegations were a “complete fabrication,” his relationship with Cooper was never more than platonic and the lawsuit was a retaliatory fantasy cooked up by her to get back at him for not returning her affections.

“It caused me to lose my job, it was a difficult situation and unjustly alienated me from friends and family,” Priest said.

Priest’s Garden City attorney Christopher Bechtle, who represented him when Cooper sued, called Cooper’s allegations “bizarre and wildly untrue.”

In February 2013, Priest called the Ridgewood Police Department to report Cooper for harassment but did not end up signing the complaint, according to records and Priest. No arrests or charges were filed, police said.

The NYPD confirmed there was another police report Priest filed against Cooper for harassment on June 8, 2014, after she allegedly came to his home, repeatedly rang the doorbell and asked to enter the location, and sent a series of text messages, the NYPD told The Post.

The Queens District Attorney’s Office did not have records for the case and police said no arrests or charges were filed.

Priest characterized his former friendship with Cooper as a never-ending “cycle of drama.”

When Priest saw Cooper in the now-viral video showing her threatening to call the police on Christian Cooper (no relation), he said, he wasn’t surprised.

“I feel very badly for Mr. Cooper,” Priest said.
 

meka72

Well-Known Member
How 2 Lives Collided in Central Park, Rattling the Nation
The inside story of the black birder and the white woman who called the police on him. Their encounter stirred wrenching conversations about racism and white privilege.





Credit...Brittainy Newman/The New York Times; Alison Faircloth

By Sarah Maslin Nir

  • June 14, 2020
Leer en español
Christian Cooper began his Memorial Day like most of his May mornings, searching for Blackburnian warblers, scarlet tanagers and other songbirds that wing their way into Central Park.

In his Lower East Side apartment, Mr. Cooper, 57, slung on his prize possession, his Swarovski binoculars — a pricey 50th birthday present from his late father. Leaving his boyfriend asleep in bed, he biked three miles away, to the semi-wild section of the park, the Ramble.

Around the same time, Amy Cooper, 40, who is not related to Christian Cooper, left her apartment on the Upper West Side at the edge of the Hudson River. She was with her dog, Henry, a blond cocker spaniel she had rescued and whose romps around the city she chronicled on a dedicated Instagram account.

It was in the Ramble that the two Coopers’ lives collided, an encounter that was brief but would reverberate in New York City and beyond, stirring anguished conversations about racism and hypocrisy in one of the nation’s most progressive cities.


Only a few hours later, George Floyd would be killed in Minneapolis when a police officer pinned Mr. Floyd’s neck under his knee. The two Memorial Day incidents captured on video two facets of entrenched racism black people experience: one the horrors of police brutality, the other the routine humiliations and threats in daily life.

Just before 8 a.m., Mr. Cooper was startled from his quiet birding by Ms. Cooper, who was loudly calling after her dog, he said. He asked her to leash Henry, as the park rules required. She refused.


  • Thanks for reading The Times.
Subscribe to The Times

They exchanged words, and as he recorded on his phone, she threatened to report that “an African-American man is threatening my life,” a false accusation. Then as Mr. Cooper continued to film, she called 911.

The video clip shows that before and during the 911 call, she referred to Mr. Cooper as “African-American,” three times. Mr. Cooper’s sister later posted the clip to Twitter, where it has been viewed more than 40 million times.

Their lives have gone in drastically different directions since then. Amy Cooper was fired from her high-level finance job, she temporarily surrendered her dog and has been vilified as the embodiment of racism and white privilege. Christian Cooper has appeared on “The View” and has become such a celebrated figure that a congressional candidate in the Bronx publicized Mr. Cooper’s endorsement.

His experience has also been highlighted by prominent black politicians, from former President Barack Obama to the city’s public advocate, Jumaane Williams, during the protests over Mr. Floyd’s death.

Mr. Cooper said the encounter touched a nerve and evoked a long history of racism. “It’s not about her,” he said in an interview.

“What she did was tap into a deep vein of racial bias,” Mr. Cooper added. “And it is that deep vein of racial bias that keeps cropping up that led to much more serious events and much more serious repercussions than my little dust-up with Amy Cooper — the murder of George Floyd, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery,and before that Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond and Eric Garner and Tamir Rice.”

Before that day, Mr. Cooper and Ms. Cooper were both successful professionals with prestigious degrees and a love of animals, which drew them to that haven in the city, Central Park. But a deeper look at their lives shows that their encounter was to some extent a telling reflection of their personalities.

Mr. Cooper warmly embraces serious nerdiness, memorizing bird song and learning bits of the Klingon language from Star Trek. But he also has an activist’s bent, bristling at society’s injustices.

He once set up his own nonprofit group to help elect Democrats, and he used his love of comic books to break barriers by creating one of the first gay Star Trek characters.

Among Central Park’s birders, he is considered to be a mentor — even to those who disapprove of his preferred tactic to protect the birds’ sanctuary: He deploys treats to tempt unleashed dogs so that their owners tether them. (During the Central Park encounter, he pulled out one such treat for Ms. Cooper’s dog.)


Ms. Cooper, an immigrant from Canada, can be sensitive and caring, according to her friends, but also seems to have a more contentious side. Neighbors said she had a tendency to get into personal disputes.

Her personal life once spilled into court. A few years ago, according to a lawsuit she filed, she had become involved with a married man and had lent him $65,000. When he did not leave his wife for her, she filed the suit in Manhattan to get back the money, before settling.


Though Ms. Cooper issued an apology to Mr. Cooper after their encounter, she has not since spoken publicly. The authorities are reviewing whether she can be charged with filing a false police report.

Ms. Cooper did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“I reacted emotionally and made false assumptions about his intentions when, in fact, I was the one who was acting inappropriately by not having my dog on a leash,” she wrote in her apology.

“I am well aware of the pain that misassumptions and insensitive statements about race cause,” she said. “I would never have imagined that I would be involved in the type of incident that occurred.”

Since the video of their encounter went viral, Mr. Cooper has expressed some ambivalence about what has happened to Ms. Cooper’s life.

“I’m not excusing the racism, but I don’t know if her life needed to be torn apart,” he said a day after the video went viral.

“There are certain dark societal impulses that she, as a white woman, facing in a conflict with a black man, that she thought she could marshal to her advantage,” Mr. Cooper said. “She went there.”

The dog walker




Ms. Cooper’s building on the Upper West Side was once known as Trump Place, but the name was removed in a symbolic action against the president by liberal residents.

Around the building, Ms. Cooper was known for her attachment to her cocker spaniel, Henry. She was described as a constant presence on morning walks and at doggy birthday parties.

“From what I saw, she was very devoted to her animals,” said Maria Meade, 60, who lives in a nearby building. “The only thing I’ll tell you is she never spoke directly to a person. She always spoke through her dog, and in a baby voice. It was really bizarre.”

It is not possible to determine to what extent recollections of Ms. Cooper’s behavior are now shaded by news of her encounter in Central Park. Still, some residents said they held her at arm’s length because of what they described as her combative behavior with other dog walkers and the building staff.

Another neighbor, Marisol De Leon, 40, said Ms. Cooper frequently walked Henry unleashed, and became irate when told not to. “There was a sense of entitlement,” Ms. De Leon said.

Alison Faircloth, 37, a neighbor and dog owner, recalled that last winter, she came upon Ms. Cooper on the verge of tears outside the building’s lobby. A doorman had cursed at her for no reason, Ms. Cooper told her. Ms. Cooper vowed to get the doorman fired, Ms. Faircloth said.

But when Ms. Faircloth asked the doorman what had happened, he told her that Ms. Cooper had complained about a broken elevator, then cursed at him after she barged into a security booth and had to be removed by a guard.


“There’s always a narrative from her about someone who has done her wrong,” Ms. Faircloth said.

The building’s management declined to comment.

Before arriving in New York Ms. Cooper lived in Ontario, where she attended the University of Waterloo. She obtained a master’s degree at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, according to her résumé.

She has worked at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and A.I.G., according to her résumé. She spent the past five years at Franklin Templeton, rising to become a vice president of insurance portfolio management, making investments for insurance companies.

It was on that corporate ladder that she met Martin Priest, a married colleague at Lehman Brothers, where, her résumé said, she worked from 2005 to 2008.

In a lawsuit filed in 2015, when she was no longer dating Mr. Priest, Ms. Cooper sought repayment of $65,000. She said she had given him the money to help speed his divorce and pay another woman he was involved with to abort her pregnancy, according to court records.

In the lawsuit, Ms. Cooper said Mr. Priest preyed on her emotions to get the money, promising it would help them to be together.

Instead, she said she discovered that his wife, Tianna, whom he was divorcing, was pregnant — and Mr. Priest was planning to marry a third woman, who was also pregnant, the lawsuit said.

“She was naïve, devastated, heartbroken,” said a person involved in the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the settlement is private.

In an interview, Mr. Priest denied that he’d had a romantic relationship with Ms. Cooper, though he admitted to borrowing the money. He called her a “stalker” who fictionalized their relationship, then erupted when it did not go her way.

In an unusual twist, since the lawsuit, Ms. Cooper has developed a close friendship with Tianna Priest, who is now divorced from Martin Priest, after Ms. Cooper exposed his infidelity to her. Ms. Cooper and Ms. Priest now spend holidays together.

Ms. Priest declined to comment on the Central Park encounter, but praised Ms. Cooper’s professionalism.


“Work, work, work, work, work — she’s a workaholic,” Ms. Priest said. “She loves numbers, so she gets it and she’s good at it.”

To Ms. Priest’s family, Ms. Cooper is a hero, who saved Ms. Priest from a toxic marriage, said Tom Selby, Ms. Priest’s father. He blamed his former son-in-law: “Amy is just another one of his victims,” Mr. Selby said.


A day after the video went viral, internet commenters noted that the Instagram account dedicated to Henry documented injuries that the dog had suffered. That evening, under pressure, Ms. Cooper returned the dog to Abandoned Angels Cocker Spaniel Rescue.

On June 3, the organization said it had given Henry back to Ms. Cooper at her request after its veterinarian found that the dog was in good health.

The bird-watcher


On a family road trip when he was 11 years old, Christian Cooper was given a copy of “The Birds of North America” to keep him entertained. By the end of the excursion in a Volkswagen bus with his sister, Melody, and their parents, two schoolteachers from Long Island, he had memorized the entire text, he said, and was identifying the birds that flew by.

He was equally enthralled by comic books, which he parlayed into a career after he graduated from Harvard with a degree in political science.

“‘The X-Men’ was a perfect parable for the gay experience,” he told Wired Magazine in an interview in 1998. “The X-Men looked like everyone else, but they learned a deep secret in adolescence that made them different.”

In the late 1980s, Mr. Cooper served on the board of directors of GLAAD, formerly the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and set up his own political action committee to support Democrats for the New York Senate, according to a biography on “Gay USA,” a televised news show about gay issues, which Mr. Cooper occasionally hosts.

In 1998 he launched “Queer Nation,” a pioneering gay web comic that envisioned L.G.B.T.Q. superheroes fighting the scourge of a right-wing world order. It was partly inspired by his parents, he told Wired, who were active in the civil rights movement.

Mr. Cooper is now a senior editor at Health Science Communications, a public relations agency for the health care industry. But his résumé does not diminish the universality to his experience as a black man, some have pointed out.

“I have no doubt that if the police had showed up in the Ramble, a wooded area of the park where Chris had gone bird watching, my brother’s Ivy League degree and impressive résumé would not have protected him,” his sister, Melody, wrote in an Op-Ed in The New York Times on May 31.

In a series of posts, Marie Javins, a former colleague, tried to make sense of what happened.

“If you’d asked me ‘What do you think Christian would be famous for,’ I’d have guessed for something he’d written, a science-fiction book or maybe the Star Trek comic he used to write where he introduced the first gay character in the history of Star Trek,” she wrote.

She said she never would have expected it would be because a white woman “used the term ‘African-American man’ as a weapon.”

The Ramble



Image

Credit...Brittainy Newman/The New York Times
Above all, the constants in Mr. Cooper’s life have been the thrushes, sparrows and swallows of Central Park.

Just beside the 79th Street Transverse, the semi-wild part of the park called the Ramble is a haven this time of year for migrating birds.

There, special rules to protect them — including that dogs be leashed at all times — often render it a microcosm of the city’s tensions: between nature and urban life; between solitude and socializing.

Mr. Cooper is a well-known presence there, a mentor to neophyte birders who carries gravitas as a member of the board of the New York City Audubon Society.

“He has a method of dealing with dogs. He’ll say, ‘Can you please leash your dog?’ and if they refuse he starts giving the dogs treats,” said Zach McDargh, 29, a research scientist. “Dog owners hate that.”

At about 8 a.m. on Memorial Day, as Henry bounded through the Ramble, and his owner refused to leash him as was required and as she was asked, Mr. Cooper fished in his pockets for those treats.

“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,” he recalled saying, in his Facebook post about the incident, before he took out his phone to film the scofflaw behavior.

The video recorded Ms. Cooper as she lunged at him, then threatened to call 911 and claimed that he was threatening her life.

Officers responded to a report of an assault that never happened. The police later characterized it as a “verbal dispute.”

“I was conscious of the fact I was now a target of the cops, and by target, I don’t mean that they are going to necessarily kill me,” Mr. Cooper said later. “That’s never a comfortable feeling when you’re black and under suspicion.”

That morning, aware that the police would most likely be arriving shortly, Mr. Cooper recalled his next steps clearly.

He picked back up his Swarovski binoculars that hung around his neck and continued to look for splashes of feathers atop the London plane trees.

“I was adamant about that,” Mr. Cooper said. “I birded my way out as I normally do.”
 
Last edited:

Kanky

Well-Known Member
:lachen: @ them putting all of her pitiful business in the NYTimes. I told y'all that white people would never forgive Amy Cooper for what she did to that dog. :lol:

Chris Cooper was right to keep it classy and shady. He came out of this looking fantastic and the whole thing started when he tried to feed a racist white woman's dog in the park. If he'd gone too hard then people would've tried to protect the evil white woman. Instead she is fired, banned from the park, has a law against racism named after her, and is being made fun of in the NYT.
 

Miss_Luna

Well-Known Member
She is constantly losing so I'm not even mad. I'd prefer if the law was called "Birdman's Law". We don't want anything to commemorate this person, it might be distorted in history, like they usually do with everything.

I wonder how she gets all these high-profile jobs when she's clearly emotionally unstable.
 

Shimmie

"God is the Only Truth -- Period"
Staff member
This course of action I necessary and long past due. We gotta stop letting toxic systemic abuse ride. If he wants to forgive her as a person fine but the system needs to go ahead and execute punishment on the issue itself and make appropriate precedents.
I agree; legal retribution is necessary and long overdue, otherwise it will continue. People need to know their crimes have consequences with a high price tag.
 

weaveadiva

Well-Known Member
From the article:

Mr. Cooper, who has expressed deep ambivalence about the severity of the public response to Ms. Cooper’s actions, said on Monday that he “had zero involvement” in the district attorney’s case against her.

Asked to comment on the pending charge, he said, “I have no reaction.”



Deep ambivalence though? I love it :lol:
 
Top