Thread by @Ame0baRepublic

I'd like to zoom in on a distinction I make w/ random, frightened Karens & the police (same thing, really, just with authority): I believe them. I believe they have these irrational fears. I believe it literally physiologically affects them.

I also believe that's not my problem.

https://twitter.com/RawStory/status/1422995465877004288

The question is not about Amy Cooper's fears in the park that day (your feelings) — it is about what she chose to do with those fears (the facts that don't care about them).

The explicit argument being made is not about her fear, but that her fear justifies her actions.

I've been around the block long enough to know the survival of one's family is, for many, NEVER enough to justify slinging dope on the corner.

Or that Ahmad Arbury was responsible for his own murder after going berserk on 3 white, armed men who surrounded him with pickup trucks.

When I was kidnapped off the street by a plain-clothes police officer in Rabat, Morocco, I almost punched him, & I remain grateful I did not.

I didn't know he was a police officer, but even so, I doubt my fears would've served as adequate a justification as Cooper feels hers do.

Neither will you receive a sympathetic response if you dare to mention the socio-economic conditions that produce looting or rioting.

So why are we talking about Amy Cooper's 🥰feelings🥰 in the same context as what she did with them?

She was afraid. Next question?

Everyone can get behind the idea that you're not supposed to do bad things to other people unprovoked.

But when it comes to what is tantamount to a racist mob hit, a police shooting, or the survival of the Southern states under slavery — these considerations go out the window?

I'm convinced this is why police beat up nonviolent protesters — non-violence enrages them because they do not have a pretext for the decision they would like to make, and therefore no psychological reprieve from the responsibility of making that decision consciously.

If you are not attacking them & being the monster they have been told you are, they have to attack you.

They resent you for forcing them to make that decision, because the justification allows them to retain their humanity. A conscious decision requires the abandonment of it.

Non-violence places them squarely at the crossroads of two symbiotic decisions — the decision to relinquish their own humanity or to recognize yours.

And because they've already decided against you, they can either hate themselves for making that choice or they can hate you.

So when cops go into court and they say they were terrified for their lives of me, I don't scoff like everyone else — I think they're telling the truth.

The missing element is that truth isn't particularly salient or important. Not to me. And not to them when the targets change.

Amy Cooper knows that she is the exact American profile who can expect to have their feelings respected over the facts, and that appealing to terror is appealing to the violent unease with Black people that resides in the hearts of a majority of the public adjudicating her.

So I believe Amy Cooper, but I do have a question: do her fears give us any pertinent information about the situation that unfolded in the park?

Why she chose to call 911? Why she mentioned Christian Cooper was black? Do they tell us whether or not she should've been charged?

No. Her feelings are wholly irrelevant to determining law and order. But where she lives, those are the same. The fact that Amy Cooper was afraid doesn't imply Christian Cooper made her afraid.

It's just supposed to. And it's supposed to imply that her fear is enough.

It's not.