I thought I screenshotted it before I deleted it, because usually that's what I do. I don't think things should just go down the memory hole. But my original tweet on the Amy Cooper thing wasn't particularly well-thought out, and upset a lot of folks I didn't mean to upset.

1/ https://twitter.com/G_Padraic/status/1265322465456242690

It certainly wasn't my intention to suggest either that what she did wasn't atrocious. It was. We live in a racist society, with a racist heritage that we've never really reckoned with, and police violence falls disproportionately onto people that don't look like me.

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Don't look like Cooper, either, for that matter. And, of course, I think she knew that -- she reached for the phone and the threat of police intervention in the same sense one might reach for a gun, or a knife. It was her weapon.

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And, to be clear, it is a deadly one. Especially in the context of this pandemic, where even if police had responded and treated Mr. Cooper with the utmost respect and kindness but arrested him, it seems very possible he could have contracted coronavirus.

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That behavior, and I think the ease with which Ms. Cooper equipped it, reflects our long history of systemic racism. A white supremacy in which we all are mired, and which white people like myself are both complicit in and benefit from -- good intentions notwithstanding.

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Mr. Cooper, by filming the interaction, may have well saved his own life, and shines a light on the reality of our society and culture in 2020. People didn't think police violence was a major problem in communities of color until the widespread adoption of smartphones.

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In other words, I think it's necessary for us all to witness it, to repudiate it, and to work towards some kind of measure of accountability for Ms. Cooper in this instance.

And, that's simply not for me to say what it should be.

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In a perfect world, that would largely be Mr. Cooper's call.

However (and you know that there'd be a however), there's two things I want to try to express.

The first is that I think it is mistaken to view Ms. Cooper's racist and unacceptable behavior as some isolated

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defect of her individual character. It's convenient, I think, to dismiss racism as the product of isolated individual bad actors who we can brand as monstrous and send off into the wilderness. But given the pervasiveness of it in our society, and culture, that's a lot of monsters

that we have to kill. And I'm not sure that the pendulum won't start swinging back in the other direction before we vanquish them all.

My opinion is that her racism is a product of the racist society in which we all exist. How else would she know to use that as a weapon?

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To the extent that we continue to view racism as the product of individual bad actors, I think that obfuscates the water in which we all swim.

And I don't know what Ms. Cooper's circumstances are, or what kind of a day she was having.

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I think "bad day" was a poor phrase to use. Something closer to mental breakdown is what I meant. Whatever her circumstances are, or were, however, doesn't excuse or justify her conduct. It was still wrong, and harmful, and could have been much worse.

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I also think we do live in a society where seeking to have compassion for someone, even someone who has done something truly bad and heinous, is seen as the same thing as excusing that same conduct.

I think that's one reason why our prisons are so brutal, and so many are dying.

I think Ms. Cooper needs to be accountable for her conduct, no matter what her circumstances are or were. And I don't know what that looks like, but I do feel comfortable saying it shouldn't be doxxing and death threats.

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I'm not suggesting that she has earned her redemption by way of her apology, either. Just that it should be an option that is open to her, if she wants it, and demonstrates that she's willing to do the work she needs to do to take ownership and make amends to Mr. Cooper.

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And, again, that's not really my call as to whether or not she has done that. But I *do* think it should be an option available to her, just as it should be an option available to any human being who has done something wrong.

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And that's what she is: a human being who did something wrong.

I certainly don't mind dying on hills where I'm arguing for more compassion, and if I die on this one too I think I'm okay with that in that I'm trying to be a bit more intentional about it. x