Page 40 - CLT072020

40 ¦ JULY 20, 2020 EXPERT OPINION

Amy Cooper Is a Victim and Feminist.
Who Knew?

By Vivia Chen

Credit: Mangostar/

Shutterstock.com

Amy Cooper (aka “Karen”) is back in the Me? I tend to agree with Christian that Amy
news again. And readers are urging me to Cooper has suffered enough. (He told the New
weigh in. York Times, “Bringing her more misery just seems
I’m talking, of course, about the white woman like piling on.”) Not only did she lose her Wall
who called the police on a Black male birdwatcher Street job, but she’s been demonized beyond all
in Central Park. proportion. While there’s no denial that she played
As you might know, Cooper is now in legal the race card in her interaction with Christian, is
trouble. New York’s district attorney has decided she really racism incarnate?
to prosecute her for filing a false police report. The To state the obvious: None of us knows her, and
question is: Why bother? her entire life shouldn’t be defined by those few
Christian Cooper (no relation to Amy Coo- minutes in Central Park that were captured on
per), the man whom she falsely accused, thinks video. There’s a limit to what we can say about her
it’s pointless. He’s refusing to cooperate with pros- character, psyche, history or anything else.
ecutors. But lots of people disagree, including Well, it turns out lots of people feel equipped
Christian’s sister, Melody Cooper. “She wants an to fill in the blanks. Ever since I wrote about how
example made out of the woman who weaponized some female lawyers are worried that Amy Coo-
her whiteness against him,” reports TheGrio. per evokes misogynistic stereotypes (such as the

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