Hold People Responsible, But Please Know Their Message or Intent or Correct Identity First

Less than two weeks ago Amy Cooper, a white woman, called the police on Christian Cooper, a black man, who simply asked her to leash her dog, as is the rule in New York City’s Central Park, because he was bird watching and loose dogs would negatively impact it. It was another in a long line of white women calling the police on black men for breaking no laws at all – something that we know could have potentially deadly consequences for the black men.

Shortly after video of this went viral people doing online sleuthing found out that Amy Cooper was an employee of Franklin Templeton and attempted to and succeeded in getting her fired.

There was some debate about whether or not this was wrong or right. I felt it was right, because even if she wasn’t on the clock when this incident happened, she still represents that company and what company would want someone working for them who is either racist or did something racist.

That seemed like months ago after what has happened since with the death of George Floyd at the knee of the Minneapolis P.D. The country has become engaged in activism and civil unrest in the week since Floyd’s death, the majority of it peaceful.

I never expected protests to come to my hometown of Conway, Ark. I always felt it was too small of a town to participate in a large scale in something of this nature but was pleasantly surprised to see a good sized protest that ended up just a couple of miles from my home on Sunday night (May 31).

There was a livestream of this protest on Facebook that I followed for probably a couple of hours and I might have commented on it upwards of 10 times. Most of my comments were straightforward about how I believed if the local and state police used teargas on what was a peaceful protest, but they wanted broken up because they didn’t have a permit for it and at times were standing in the street, it would’ve been escalating the situation. The majority of my comments were obviously pro-protest. But I’m a sarcastic person by nature and when I saw a comment that I felt was idiotic from another commentator who said, “They aren’t going home until the gas comes out” while the protest was in front of a local thrift shop called Touch of Heaven I responded with: “’They aren’t going home until the gas comes out’ – y’all plan on thrift shopping at Touch of Heaven at 9:30 on a Sunday Night.” This was also a sarcastic comment about people acting like they had to be somewhere late on a Sunday evening when complaining about folks blocking traffic.

I felt that putting the original commenter’s statement in quotes would make it apparent I was commenting on it (but who knows when people come into these live streams and what they do or do not see). I also made the dumb mistake – that I’ve honestly made a few times in my life – of thinking strangers are going to catch my sarcasm, especially in text. And, it doesn’t help that the business was a thrift shop and my use of “thrift shopping” might have been seen as a euphemism for looting. I really didn't think it through - again I admit I was dumb in that situation. 

Somebody screenshotted my remark and I ended up on a post that said something to the effect of “the racists are out in Conway tonight.” I actually only found the post because the person who shared it had left a comment on another one of my comments that I was confused by. Ultimately, I found out we were both confused by each other.

I politely asked the poster if she would remove the comment and explained I was using sarcasm to mock someone I thought was being idiotic. I asked her to look at my previous comments on the post or check out my profile – all of my posts are public and I’ve had a lot of pro-protest, anti-police brutality, etc. posts as of late. Thankfully for my potential well-being she understood and removed my image from the post.

This is something that happens from time to time. People are either misunderstood or more often misidentified by folks trying to get them fired.

Remember, I was OK with Amy Cooper being fired.

I’m still OK with Amy Cooper being fired.

I’m seeing many such posts about people saying racist things and I do believe there should be consequences for those people.

I only ask that if you’re going to screenshot someone’s words or identify them via photographs that you make certain you know exactly what they are saying, meaning and especially that it’s the correct person before doing so. Because there are misunderstandings.

Luckily, most people aren’t as dumb as I was being on Sunday night and are saying exactly what they mean in a straight-forward manner. But fact-checking is something we should all be doing.