5/26/20
Oof. I initially thought I would make this into a thread and post it on Twitter, but as a member of the problematic demographic in this situation (privileged white women), I should probably sit this one out on social media.
So. A black man in New York City was enjoying Central Park and was in an area called the Ramble, which is for wildlife and bird watching. There is a leash law in effect in that area. He came across a white woman who was exercising her cocker spaniel off leash. He asked her to leash her dog in accordance with the leash law, and she refused, saying her dog needed to be exercised. He asked her to take the dog to a different part of the park where she could run the dog off leash, and again she refused, saying it was "dangerous". At this point, the man wisely started filming the encounter with his cell phone. She became aggressive with him, approaching him and wagging her finger in his face, telling him to stop filming. He maintained his calm the entire time, even when she then pulled out her own phone and informed him that she was going to call the police and tell them that an African American man was threatening her life. She proceeded to actually make the call and intentionally changed her voice to make herself sound distressed, telling the 911 operator that she was being threatened by an African American man in the park. [The entire time this is going on, she has her dog by the collar and is lifting the dog off the ground by the neck. The dog is choking and struggling.] After her call, the man, who remained calm the entire time, thanked her for finally putting the leash on the dog and walked away. He posted the video to social media, and it was then shared by his sister. The video went viral, and the story was widely shared on multiple platforms. Eventually, it reached someone who could identify her, a young man who said he had been a dog walker for her. He identified her by name, and the internet took over. They found her FB and Instagram accounts, the rescue where she had gotten the dog, her Linkedin account, and of course her employer. People implored the rescue to reclaim the dog (she voluntarily surrendered the dog to them). People demanded she be fired (her employer has put her on administrative leave while they investigate). People want her to be arrested (which hasn't happened yet). She did put out a weak apology, saying that she was afraid, that he shouted at her (there isn't any evidence to support that), and that she now realizes that she is in a privileged group that can rely on the police for protection but that there are groups that cannot rely on the same thing (African Americans).
All of this, of course, comes on the heels of the public murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a black man jogging in a neighborhood outside Brunswick, Georgia, and a host of other shooting deaths by police of unarmed African Americans, like the recent shooting of paramedic Breonna Taylor by police who entered her apartment looking for a suspect who was actually already in police custody and hadn't been anywhere near there...I could go on.
The responses on social media have been vast and varied. Dog Twitter was appalled at her treatment of her dog. In searching for information about this woman, they found a surprising number of posts she made about dramatic and dangerous things that happened to the dog, leading some to wonder if it might be a situation of Munchausen by proxy involving her dog. Birding Twitter used the situation as an example of people misusing wild spaces and related their own encounters with unleashed dogs and privileged idiots. There were plenty of apologists who agreed that the woman had done a terrible thing but that they could understand her behavior *to an extent* because they believed that she really thought she was in danger. And an unsurprising number (I guess) of people were distressed at the fact that this woman had been "doxxed" (had personal identifying information posted publicly for the purpose of harassment) and that she did not deserve to have her life ruined.
There are many examples of situations where this kind of public shaming has gotten out of control. I am familiar with the issue because I actually use it in my classroom--Justine Sacco, and Jon Ronson's book So You've Been Publicly Shamed; various United Airlines debacles, including the doctor dragged off the UA flight in 2017; Dani Mathers, the model who took a photo of an older woman in a locker room at a gym and posted it to Snapchat; trophy hunters like Walter Palmer and Rebecca Francis; and even some local incidents in my town. I pose the questions to my students to think about: can public shaming be justifiable? Are there times that it is beneficial? How can we keep it from becoming an out-of-control situation?
So I found myself very interested in this incident, mainly because of those last two groups of people. This woman has been labeled "Central Park Karen," yet another white woman employing her privilege at the expense of another, a person of color. The apologists chuckle a little uncomfortably at the nickname, agree that the woman was out of line to call the cops, but then justify her behavior *to an extent* by pointing out that she is a woman alone in a wooded area and is confronted by a man. And I get it; I do. I am a woman. I have been alone before and had men come up and talk to me. I was uncomfortable. I could have been in danger. But you know what I didn't do? I didn't call the cops on someone who didn't deserve it. He wasn't threatening her. He asked her to put her dog on a leash and reminded her that she was breaking the rules. And her response was to get pissy with him and get in his face. He was justified in filming her, for his own self defense, just like cops wearing body cameras do it for the safety of themselves and the safety of others. Because if there was no record of it happening, honestly, WHO would believe the word of a black man over a white woman? Sure, it's been 60 years since To Kill A Mockingbird was written and 85 years since its events would have taken place, but the world sadly has not changed all that much. We are very, very concerned with believing all victims, which is good, but we cannot forget that there should also be a policy of innocent until proven guilty, and that policy is forgotten when it involves people of color over and over again. She used her privilege to call the cops on him, because she was pissed that he wanted her to obey the leash law. And yes, she knew what she was doing. She was not terrified when she interacted with him; she was firm and strong with him. She did not affect fear in her voice until she was on the phone to the 911 operator, and that was intentional. She was not afraid of him; she was MAD. She pretended to be afraid on the phone to make them believe her, not him. I can also tell this because of her word choice. When she warned the man that she was going to call the police, she didn't say, "I'm going to call the police and tell them you threatened me" (which would have been a lie anyway). She said, "I'm going to tell them there's AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN threatening my life." You CANNOT tell me that she is unaware that those are loaded words to a police dispatcher. You CANNOT tell me that she doesn't know that the police will come with guns drawn. She was the one breaking the law, yet she sicced the cops on a black man because she was mad that he had the audacity to call her on it. Do you understand what she did? It's not that different from the bad guy in a movie who has been disarmed by the good guy and is being held at gunpoint shouting at the cops when they finally show up, "He's trying to kill me!" and the cops jump on the good guy and the bad guy gets away. Except guess what? This hero is black, and the cops just shoot him instead. SHE THREATENED HIS LIFE. She could get him killed, AND SHE DOES NOT FUCKING CARE.
And that's where I address the second group, the ones who think she didn't deserve to be doxxed. After all, she was just breaking a leash law, right? WRONG. Attempted murder is a crime. She tried to get this guy killed. I absolutely believe that to be true. She knew the cops would come after him, she intentionally changed her voice on the phone to guarantee it, and she did not care if he got shot in the process. Because he dared to call her out. A black man dared to call out a white woman who was breaking the law, and she could have gotten him killed. Remember that line in Of Mice and Men, when Curley's wife tells Crooks, the black stable buck, "I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny." She knows exactly what power she holds, and she wields it against a black man with ferocity. She's not just a Karen asking to speak to a manager. She's Mayella Ewell, willing to sacrifice a black man to cover up her own crime. She's Curley's wife, punishing a black man for telling her she was somewhere she shouldn't be. So, while I agree that public shaming and doxxing very often get out of hand and can put innocent people in danger, this time, I think it's justified. I think this woman deserves to be shamed. I think she deserves to lose her dog. I think she deserves to lose her job. Because I think she is a dog abuser and a racist who tried to get a black man killed. And I think she knows it.
