Ok, I did not envision going in the direction I am about to take regarding the whole “Amy Cooper Issue”, but something tells me it’s a good idea.
It all started, for me, with the now famous racist New Yorker Amy Cooper captured on the cell phone camera of Chris Cooper. You know? The case of the “Central Park Karen” , AKA Amy Cooper, who called the New York Police on the black male birdwatcher Chris Cooper? The case where Chris threatened to video Amy unless she put a leash on her dog in the area of the park called The Ramble. The case where Amy used her phone to call NYPD and tell a lie completely obvious because of the video which you can watch with a click here.
Fact: Amy Cooper Was Lying About Chris Cooper And The Central Park Encounter In The Ramble
The Chris Cooper video clearly shows that Amy Cooper was telling a lie about him. Period. The viral content led to misdemeanor charges filed against her by Cyrus Vance, and the loss of her job at Franklin Templeton. To his credit, Mr. Cooper elected to not join in the global expression of hatred for Amy Cooper, and said that she had been punished enough.
Think about that. A black man who was about to be served up as yet another example of Emmett Till -style lying about his actions on the part of a white woman, worked to protect that same white woman from going to jail herself. The Cyrus Vance-filed charges were dropped when Cooper agreed to take and “completed a five-session educational and therapeutic program focused on racial identity”
Well, whatever that “educational and therapeutic program” did, it obviously made Ms. Cooper reverse her apology. One she was free of the legal system’s gaze, Cooper went on the attack through the media. The objective of her actions was to advance a lawsuit against her former employer Franklin Templeton, and for wrongful termination.
(UPDATE: Franklin Templeton has filed a motion to dismiss the case three weeks ago, stating “‘Notwithstanding her public apologies for perpetuating systemic racism, Cooper is – once again – casting herself as victim, vilifying the birdwatcher, and portraying the incident as merely another “feud between birdwatchers and dog owners.” Just months after criminal charges against Cooper were dismissed on the ground that she allegedly “learned a lot” through restorative justice classes on racial equity, Cooper filed this lawsuit seeking to shift the blame onto defendants.’”
Cooper claims that Franklin Templeton did not bother to investigate claims that Chris Cooper was unusually aggressive toward other dog-walking park visitors. She also highlights, or NBC News highlighted, that a black man named Jerome Lockette explained that Cooper treated him the same way, and that Franklin Templeton either ignored or did not check on his story.
Bari Weiss, Kmele Foster, and Kat Rosenfield Missed The Mark In Trying to Defend Amy Cooper
All of this lead to Bari Weiss, Kmele Foster, and Kat Rosenfield’s really God-awful attempt at defending Amy Cooper. I got wind of it via Kat Rosenfield’s tweet: in hindsight, it is incredible (and not in an good way) that any of us thought a 40 second video told us everything we needed to know about the Amy Cooper story; huge respect to @kmele and @bariweiss for complicating the narrative.
Now, for me, I don’t care if there’s a single black writer in a group of white writers, if the overall ownership is white, and the take is racist, I’m going to call out the group as “white writers”. I tweeted: Say Kat, can you please stop presenting the “Amy Cooper story” as if there’s one perspective? There’s your groups view as white reporters, then there’s the view of black men, like myself, who you don’t talk to, who’ve been victims of “Amy Coopers”.
Thus, Kat, who I don’t know and because she had a history of working with Stan Lee and thus figured she would not be “that woman”, shot back if I knew who Kmele Foster was?
Frankly, I didn’t care and asked her if she knew who I was. All of this was to the amusement of Mr. Foster, by the way. I wrote this:
And I double down on my point. Rather than understand my view, you seek to buttress your own. Again, you come from a white media view. You don’t seek to go beyond it. You could say “Hey you two should talk from your view..”
Kat wrote “*My* view? I wrote very unsympathetically about Amy Cooper at the time of this incident! I have now recommended a followup piece of reporting by a non-white journalist. I am genuinely unclear as to your objections here.”
I wrote: “Kat. Read your words: they’re defensive. Again, it’s about, really about, your story. My OBJECTIVE should be more important than your perception of my objections. I am trying to get you to SEE. Which seems impossible.”
The overall problem is that having a disagreement on Jack Dorsey’s site is unproductive. It activates our insecurities. Facial expression, more complex sentences, tone, etc – all of the ways a person tries to communicate that they don’t mean anything personally are thrown away on Twitter and other text-based social media platforms. I think Loc Leimur had the right idea with Seismic from 2006, but he just could not get any traction. But I digress.
As you can see, I was trying to make a connection with Kat. I was trying to get her to see my point of view.
She wrote: by “see,” you seem to mean that I should agree that I’m part of a white media hive mind presenting a one-sided take on this story; obviously I’m not going to capitulate to you on this when it’s demonstrably false:
Say Kat, can you please stop presenting the “Amy Cooper story” as if there’s one perspective? There’s your groups view as white reporters, then there’s the view of black men, like myself, who you don’t talk to, who’ve been victims of “Amy Coopers”.
But for me, it was not at all false. I got frustrated and wrote “Like I said: its really about your story. Vlog time. Very disappointing. You’ll never get it.” You’re as defensive as Amy Cooper. Like I said: it’s all about your story, not mine, or any other black man. Thanks for proving my point.
What I have learned from that exchange and the homework I did after it just plained cemented my initial beliefs. That, when it comes to racism and black men, black men have few allies, especially among younger black men.
In too many cases, it seems there’s always some black man who steps forward, ready to defend the status quo against a black man who dares expose racism. Or, someone creates a character that is identified as black to accomplish the same purpose. In the case of Chris Cooper, that was Jerome Lockette.
Who’s that? Well, Jerome Lockette is a so-called “heterodox” black man who reportedly told NBC News that Chris Cooper was getting after him in an aggressive tone because his dog was not on a leash in The Ramble. He’s quoted by Mr. Foster as saying “As a black man, I am not scared of another person because their race or ethnicity, but this man IS threatening w/ his body language & screaming. I don’t know Amy Cooper at all…but when I saw that video, I thought, I cannot imagine if he approached her the same way…”…how she may have genuinely been afraid for her life. She may not be like me willing to physically defend herself or her dog. I understand the optics of this video aren’t great, but people need to understand this man is a dick and probably did threaten her.”
Now, for me, I’m looking for the Jerome Lockette video, but there’s no such thing. So, how do we know Jerome Lockette is black? I, for one, don’t believe his story. And why is it so important that he’s called “heterodox”, or “not conforming with accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs”? Why is that important when we are talking about a crime? We have everyone in this case on video except Jerome Lockette. That’s fishy. Jerome Lockette has not presented himself on camera, and NBC News said that Jerome Lockette “identifies as a black man.” You mean, you can’t tell?
Jerome Lockette Looks Like A Fake Black Person Created To Throw Off Amanda Cooper Critics
Could it be that Jerome Lockette was fake?
As a YouTube Partner since 2008, I have observed too many times when a commenter will claim they’re black, and then disagree with me on a matter regarding racism. 95 percent of the time the YouTube commenter is without a photo, or even a YouTube channel of their own. When I ask for racial identification, I never get a response. In the 5 percent where the person really is black, we have a true dialog and understanding. Those folks are now subscribers to my Zennie62 YouTube Channel. My experience leads me to question the existence of THE Jerome Lockette. If Chris Cooper steps forward and says “I’ve never heard of this dude”, then it’s a good chance he was manufactured. It’s worth checking out.
As for Kmele Foster, I have to start with his claim that he does not “self-identify as black”. Folks, that, right there, tells me all I need to know about his motivations. See, I was at 9 years old where he is at 40 years old. Plus, I have 18 years on him and just celebrated my 59th birthday, so as an elder, I can say I walked his walk years before he was around to think about it.
See, I was born on August 4th 1962 in Chicago, and at 9 years old, I became a President Nixon fan. Consider how I got there: my Mom worked for United Airlines, we traveled a lot, I was into Star Trek. You getting the picture? It was the height of the civil rights movement, and the images I saw of people who looked like me were negative. So, I figured out how to try and identify as a smart kid above it all, and certainly not the common black person. Again, I was 9. My Mom, however supportive of me forming my own ideas, was certain I’d lost my mind, at least politically.
That crap lasted for two years, or until I was tested with an IQ of 156, but my white Chicago teacher could not believe it, and told me so, and had me re-tested against my will. I scored a 131, which still reads out as gifted, but my trust in her was erased and replaced by my perception of her as racist. As not willing to see someone black as smart as someone white. That event had a jarring reaction on me, but in retrospect, I’m glad it happened when it did.
Now, I do not know Mr. Foster, but I can see he’s traveled a path that has placed him in the position of questioning other black people and race, and not even wanting to be called black. That’s wild. And his wife is black. As far as I’m concerned Mr. Foster is black, just confused – which is certainly his right to be. But, in his current state, he’s also well-motivated to try and punch a hole in the character of Chris Cooper. Why? All to help reform the image of Amy Cooper as not racist, even though what she did was very racist.
Also, Mr. Foster was the past chairman of the America’s Future Foundation, a on-profit organization of “young conservatives and libertarians”. That means Kmele Foster is, well either a conservative or a libertarian. Moreover, he’s got a track record of writing against President Obama’s policies while with that firm. Currently, Kmele Foster is said to be an American telecommunications entrepreneur and political commentator and Vice President of the telecommunications consultancy TelcoIQ. But guess what? I can’t find a website about TelcoIQ that has Foster on it – at least one I can open.
The last tweet of the Twitter account TelcoIQ was back in 2013, and the website connected with it has a server with a memory problem, hence the white screen of death I got when I tried to visit it. That means it’s not been maintained for some time, and calls into question the status of TelcoIQ as a going concern, as well as Mr. Foster’s connection with it. Look, I’m not trying to bring the brother down, but if he wants to shore up his corporate image, this is something he needs to fix.
So, what Kat did was confirm my fears. We have people, some black like Mr. Foster, who don’t have the typical conservative intellectual base trying to be neo-conservative, and failing. But where they do succeed is in gaining money from public relations firms and philanthropists who simply want to pull the levers of social communication for their own conservative political and business purposes. Why else would a Publix Grocery Stores board member spend $300,000 on what became the Capitol Riots? That’s what Julie Jenkins Fancelli, the daughter of Publix founder George W. Jenkins, did in 2020.
How am I to know that Mr. Foster doesn’t have the backing of someone like her since he was the past chairman of the America’s Future Foundation? Kmele gets on major programs like Fox News and Bill Maher, so his ideas reach millions. Kmele Foster is not obligated to open his books for me, nor do I wish him to do so. But I have to point to the optics.
And on the subject of optics, I come back to another one that is jarring: the insistence of some white women on calling the police on black people, yet black reluctance to call the police on someone white. Chris Cooper worked to help keep Amy Cooper out of jail; she did not thank him, and just repeated her fears about him. In the recent Victoria Secret Karen case, the black woman who made a video as she was being attacked by Abigail Epchick should have called the cops, but Ms. Epchick had no problem dialing 9-1-1. As I have said before, and will repeat, if someone is attacking you, call the police, don’t assume they will not help you because you’re black. Make them do their job: serve and protect you.
I also observe that such behavior is generational. I was brought up to call the police. I have no problem pointing out racism. I don’t attack anyone else black who does. I am 59. But Kenzie Smith, the black male victim of Oakland Lake Merritt’s BBQ Becky, AKA Jessica Schulte, let her harass him and his friends for three full hours, before his white now-ex-wife came up, confronted her, and make her now famous video of Ms. Schulte. Overall, I find black men of Kenzie Smith, Kmele Foster , and Chris Cooper’s age group to be less willing to use our institutions to protect them from racism. Yet, I find black men in that group all too willing to try and shut down another black person’s claim of racism. (Some of my view was gained while interviewing Kenzie Smith, here, below.).
This is backward progress and a sign that the only way we can see any true progress is another George Floyd video. And even then my fear is we will be so desensitized it will not matter, and the forecast decline of economic wealth of black America will continue without stoppage. Why? Because you need to be proud of yourself and others who look like you, even if you’re in a black-white relationship, as I have been in. It’s called pride of self. Without that, you can’t sell your ideas or believe you’re the best person for a job. Without that, you will not believe America should defend and protect you as much as the next person – the white person.
That’s bad for America.