Lots of people are rightfully going after CNN’s ridiculous “both sides” framing here, but I want to zero in on a specific aspect of her statement—one that we see a lot but don’t unpack enough imho.

1/x thread https://twitter.com/cnn/status/1265208572222345219

“"I'm not a racist. I did not mean to harm that man in any way," she said, adding that she also didn't mean any harm to the African American community.”

When met with condemnation for doing a racist thing, she responded by defending her singular, immutable essence.

She will not own that she DID a racism—she could not possibly have DONE a racism, because that means that she IS racist. And to her thinking, that would be an always and forever proposition.

We see this a lot, often about of whether someone has racist bones in their bodies.

Rather than, say, “I did something that was racist and I commit to educating myself to better understand why what I did was so harmful and to make better choices in the future.” Owning harm, working to change, and, I might add, offering amends of some sort to Christian Cooper.

Rather than acknowledging, eg, that we all live in a white supremacist society & takes a lot of work to fight the messages we have all internalized.

“Racist” here is something that you ARE or ARE NOT, and if you ARE, you are BAD in an unchangeable way. (Some people are racist, don’t get me wrong. And that is bad. But it’s never unchangeable for people with the will to change.) https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-white-flight-of-derek-black/2016/10/15/ed5f906a-8f3b-11e6-a6a3-d50061aa9fae_story.html

Cooper focused on what she meant. Her intent. Because what happens to her, in this reading, internally, is more important than her actions in the world. I AM not a racist, I did not MEAN to hurt the African-American community. (Also I don’t buy that for a second but regardless.)

People talk about intent vs impact because it doesn’t matter if you meant to stomp on my foot or if it was an accident, my foot is still broken now and you are responsible for that.

Her defense of her CHOICE was to defend who she IS. I have some theories as to why this is such a profoundly white American response, but regardless, this defense of the immutable self that can never change and learn and grow is so profoundly toxic & has caused so, so much harm.

I don’t believe people cannot learn and grow and choose different actions. But that work demands taking full responsibility for the harm caused—including amends and a real apology to harmed parties—and taking steps to become different (therapy, education, etc eg).

Here are some threads on what some of this work can look like. I am not optimistic that Amy Cooper will do this work—her defense of her immutable self means that she is choosing not to learn, change, grow—she will likely cause similar harm in the future.
https://twitter.com/theradr/status/1029032053088632833?s=21 https://twitter.com/TheRaDR/status/1029032053088632833

We all make choices. We can learn how to choose differently. But that requires choosing to face, bravely, the harm we have caused and be willing to do real work to clean it up.

Our selves are not immutable. Not if we choose for them not to be.

(Also, yeah, Cooper’s intent was pretty damn malicious, the whole thing in this case is so profoundly disingenuous.)