‘A Klan member could not have been better trained…’
(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) In response to a viral exchange between a white woman and a black man in Central Park, CNN contributor Van Jones said on Friday that white people, “even the most liberal, well-intentioned white” people, have a racist “virus” in their brain that can “activate” at any time.
“It’s not the racist white person, who is in the Ku Klux Klan that we have to worry about,” Jones said. “It’s the white, liberal Hillary Clinton supporter walking her dog in Central Park who would tell you right now, ‘Oh I don’t see race, race is no big deal to me, I see all people the same, I give to charities'”
Jones made these comments about white people as violent riots that started in Minneapolis, Minnesota spread throughout the country’s major cities, Fox News reported.
Christian Cooper, a black man, was birdwatching in Central Park last week when he saw Amy Cooper walking her dog through the Ramble without a leash. The two Coopers are not related.
Christian asked Amy to put the dog on a leash, as the park’s rules require, said Christian’s sister, Melody Cooper, who posted a video of the interaction on Twitter.
Amy refused to leash her dog, so Christian responded, “Look, if you’re going to do what you want, I’m going to do what I want, but you’re not going to like it,” Ben Shapiro wrote for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
She asked what he meant, and he said, “I pull out the dog treats I carry for just such intransigence.”
Amy called the police and told them that “an African-American man” was threatening her.
Oh, when Karens take a walk with their dogs off leash in the famous Bramble in NY’s Central Park, where it is clearly posted on signs that dogs MUST be leashed at all times, and someone like my brother (an avid birder) politely asks her to put her dog on the leash. pic.twitter.com/3YnzuATsDm
— Melody Cooper (@melodyMcooper) May 25, 2020
Following the incident, Amy lost her job at Franklin Templeton, an invesment firm, and many have called her a racist.
Jones said that white people become racist as the “Aryan Nation” as soon as they see black people who they do not “respect” or who they have “a slight thought against.”
“A Klan member could not have been better trained to pick up her phone and tell the police it’s a black man,” he said.
Amy Cooper apologized, saying that she “reacted emotionally and made false assumptions about his intentions,” even though he made strange comments.
Jones said recent incidents have exposed racism in the United States.
“What you’re seeing now is a curtain falling away,” Jones said. “Those of us who have been burdened by this every minute, every second of our entire lives are fragile right now… we are tired.”
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) May 29, 2020