Reflections on Christian Cooper’s new show (from a liberal white perspective)
A few days ago, it was announced that Christian Cooper will be hosting a National Geographic show on bird-watching. If you don’t recall, Christian was bird-watching in Central Park in May 2020 when Amy Cooper called the police accusing him of threatening her, when in fact he’d asked her to leash her dog in accordance with park rules. The incident went viral as one of many cases of white people (especially white women) calling the cops on Black people going about their daily business — the expectation being that police would swoop in to protect white people and their interests, comfort and “freedoms” by restricting or removing the Black people. It’s an expectation that has been borne out by history up to the present day. In the midst of numerous police murders of Black people, the nonchalant and self-righteous use of police as an everyday social weapon is chilling, to say the least.
Flash forward two years and Christian Cooper is in the news again, in a happy turn of events that brings his expertise and passion to the fore. It is being celebrated in anti-racist circles, and rightly so. There is a sense of triumph here. And yet, there’s more to consider, especially if you’re white.
When I first saw the article announcing his new show, I was reminded of a Chinese parable cited in one of my coaching disciplines. It goes like this:
An old farmer lives on his farm with his teenage son and his beautiful stallion. The farmer enters the horse into a competition and wins first prize. His neighbors congratulate him, but he perplexes them by replying, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”
The following week, with the horse’s value increased by its award-winning status, the horse is stolen. The farmer’s neighbors express their sympathies for his loss, and again he responds with, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”
A few days later, the stallion escapes his captors and returns to the old farmer, accompanied by some wild mares he has wooed along the way. The neighbors marvel at the farmer’s good fortune. Predictably, the farmer says, “Who knows what is good and what is bad?”
Weeks pass. While breaking in one of the new mares, the farmer’s son is thrown and fractures his leg. Again, the neighbors express sympathy to the farmer for this unlucky incident. You can guess what he says.
The following week, the army arrives at the village to draft all eligible men for a war that is breaking out. The farmer’s son is passed over because of his broken leg. The neighbors at this point give up trying to congratulate or commiserate with the sanguine philosopher of a farmer.
The story exaggerates the point, but it’s a point nonetheless worth considering. It invites us to step out of our myopic, binary perspectives and cultivate a more embracing appreciation of whatever life throws our way. Recognizing that things turn on a dime, we can learn to lean into the wisdom and growth of the hard times and relish the pleasures of the easy times.
When I saw the headline about Christian Cooper’s new show, I immediately thought of the stallion parable. Who could have guessed that a racist encounter in Central Park would lead to such a promising opportunity for the man targeted?
After all, it’s more than likely that without the Central Park incident, Christian would not have had this big break. Not because he isn’t skilled or deserving on his own merits, but because companies like National Geographic wouldn’t know his name. He wouldn’t represent the draw to audiences he does now, some of whom will almost certainly tune in because of what happened. So it feels safe to assume that were it not for the “bad” thing that happened, this “good” thing wouldn’t have happened either. It would be easy to close the book on this chapter and think, “I’m glad it all turned out well.”
But there is more to it.
For one thing, the stakes were incredibly high around the event that spawned Christian’s fame. Had things gone ever so slightly sideways, Christian could have been arrested, assaulted or killed. This is no stretch of the truth. The incident with Amy Cooper happened on May 25, 2020 — the very day George Floyd was murdered by police. It was happening then, and is still happening today.
For another thing, this confrontation was a product of systemic racism, which inflicts discrimination and violence every day, on all levels, to people of color across the board. We’re not talking about the regular ups and downs of life here, as depicted in the parable. There is a societal tilt that makes the lives of people of color harder than they need to be. Not only is it blatantly unfair, it hurts us as a collective, of which we are all part.
So — and to be clear, I’m talking to the liberal white folks in the room — while it might be tempting to feel nothing but a happy sense of vindication about Christian getting a show, we might also consider the true cost of this positive turn of events. Not only what he has actually endured — the false accusations, the possibility of police violence, the intense public scrutiny — but what could have happened, and what happens all the time to people who don’t manage to capture events on camera and have it go viral.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be happy for Christian. By all means, let’s celebrate! But let’s also be mindful that the celebration not eclipse the need to address why Christian is in this position to begin with. We live in a society where whiteness weaponizes its discomfort, its insecurity and its entitlement against people of color. From more overt examples like calling the cops on Black folks having a BBQ, to more subtle examples of NIMBY-ist sabotage of affordable housing, people racialized as white have been conditioned to believe they are owed the American dream — an illusion to keep them compliant and willing enforcers of a zero-sum social dichotomy. They are socialized to believe their pleasure and freedom are paramount to all else. Anything that stands in the way, from a Black man asking you to leash your dog to darker-skinned folks moving into the neighborhood, needs to be eliminated.
Many white folks probably don’t even realize they’re doing it when they do it. There are reasons we’ve been set up to see each other as enemies across racial lines — reasons that have less to do with individual prejudice and more to do with a controlled narrative that keeps us competing with each other instead of realizing that we’re all being played by players who profit grandly from our distraction and quarrels.
All of this calls for a more nuanced perspective and deeper understanding than we typically cultivate. It calls for a re-education. It calls for a loosening of our grip on how we were raised and what we have believed to be true. It calls for a more skilled approach to being with ourselves and others, one that leads with self-awareness, curiosity, empathy and the understanding that fundamentally, we are not separate from one another. Whether we like it or not.
So I’m happy for Christian and his new show, and I believe there is wisdom in the stallion parable. But lest we fall into the trappings of “all’s well that ends well,” I want to point to the bigger picture: that this is about a human-made system that inflicts disproportionate harm, suffering and deprivation on millions of people — not about life’s ebbs and flows.
For Christian Cooper, myself or any of us as individuals, who knows what is good and what is bad? But in the case of structural racism, I’m convinced that we can and must do better.
