I don’t know a single Black person who wakes up hoping to identify an action or behavior by a white person as racist. We have, however, lived in the world as Black people long enough to recognize racism as core to many white people’s seeing and being in the world #AThread 1/6

The interaction w/ #ChristianCooper in Central Pk triggered msgs long internalized by #AmyCooper about Black people’s inferiority & subordinate status to white ppl. She defaulted to a protection mechanism history confirms would preserve her body and simultaneously destroy his 2/6

How dare Mr. Cooper, as a Black man, audibly resist this woman’s “Liberty” to break the rules in public space, thereby calling her authority into question. Threatening him w/ a falsehood and dialing agents of the state (911) was a move by Ms. Cooper to reclaim that authority 3/6

Such moves have long had deadly consequences for us. This is why we say, white people need to go gather other white people. Her apology is supposed to make us feel empathy, rendering her false victimhood a cloak for 400+ years of terror facilItated by white womanhood? NO! 4/6

Are all white people bad? Absolutely not. No human is all bad or all good. But when it comes to the seriousness of claims made by white women about Black men & boys, history suggests we lose (our lives) more often than not. Thank God #ChristianCooper recorded the interaction 5/6

White folks, let’s use this video, and #AmyCooper’s actions, as an opportunity to have serious conversations with your children, your neighbors, congregants at your local church etc. about the problematics of antiblackness and the hidden logics of domination that got us here 6/6