Register below to join our upcoming webinars - tonight and Friday. We will send all registrants the video of the conversation the next day and also post it in our webinar archives.
In our social media age, the figure of the "entitled White woman" who calls the police on people of color, especially Black people, simply for living their lives has become so common that she has become a meme. In a week also marked by the 100,000th official COVID-19 death in the United States and the death of a Black man, George Floyd, at the hands (and knee) of a White Minneapolis police officer, Amy Cooper took her place in that long, infamous line of White women. We believe that relatively few people would have behaved as Amy Cooper did that morning in her Central Park encounter with Christian Cooper (no relation) on the morning of May 25th. But it is self-serving for the rest of us to believe that we have nothing in common with her. The truth is that the attitudes and impulses made manifest in her behavior are pervasive, and she wasn't born with them; she learned them.
Register to join us for a conversation with Jennifer Harvey, from whose CNN article we draw our title, for a conversation about what the parents of White children, in particular, can do to ensure they're not raising the next Amy Cooper. Invite others!
Black, Brown, Native peoples, poor people – we talk with our children about how to interact with police. We file formal complaints against abusive officers. (Derek Chauvin had at least SEVENTEEN complaints on his record before his encounter with George Floyd.) We take videos that go viral. We share our stories with media outlets. We file lawsuits. We protest, allies at our side. If it were just up to us to stop the racialized violence directed against us, we’d be having a completely different conversation right now.
With COVID-19 as backdrop, some predict a “long, hot summer.” Others see a promising new determination by many Whites to become a vigorous part of the solution. In this complicated context, what conversations about policing, violence, safety, justice, and race should we be having with our children of color?
Register now to join this conversation on Friday. We're excited to have regular EmbraceRacer Allison Briscoe-Smith as our special guest. Bring your questions and insights. Tell your people.