Thread by @MsMelChen

I was never interested in this story. A heated exchange at the local park between two Coopers became a national incident, absorbed into a meta-narrative about the systematically racist ether that animates all our lives.

But I *am* interested in how

bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-real-sto…

narratives take shape and become established truths, mostly because what becomes collective truths affect policies and actions.

Looking at the world through this racial lens means that every person is reduced to a racial avatar (with inherent moral worth) and the storyline then

molds itself around the characters.

This is not journalism. And this is not the first time.

A woman has lost her job, her dog, and now lives in hiding, in part because this neighborhood fracas exploded out of proportion and the account presented by the mainstream media was

totally misleading.

It was reasonable on her part to see Mr. Cooper as a threat to her and her dog; there’s even documented cases of him doing the same thing to another dog walker who happened to be black. There’s the context of friction between two subcultures: not white

and black, but dog-lovers and bird-watchers which was *far* more relevant than their skin color.

But the media couldn’t help themselves.

Thank heavens for @kmele and @bariweiss for recovering the facts in this story that had long faded into obscurity
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