My Story: My Amy Cooper Moment

I have decided to share an experience I had not so long ago, call it my Amy Cooper experience.

It started like any day, I woke up at 5am and got to work in my home office and after getting some work done, got the kids ready for school/nursery and off we went, little did I know the drama that awaited me.

I dropped the young one off at the nursery, got in the car and as I was driving out of the car park I noticed this lady in her car throw her hands up in the air almost as a sign of frustration. While still processing this and driving off, I just heard someone hit my car from the side.

Since I have never been in such a situation I was thrown into mental disarray. I parked my car, came out and asked her ‘why did you hit my car’?

That seems like a daft question but I asked because I saw her throw her hands up (probably at me), so not sure why after seeing my car, she still drove and hit my car.

Instead of apologising, she instead countered and said I ran into her which was logically impossible as the font of her car came in contact with the side of mine.

I stood beside my car, she stood beside hers while we spoke. In the blink of an eye, she just started crying uncontrollably and shaking physically and saying she feels threatened by me…I was gobsmacked! Reason was:

I never approached her during our conversation | This was a busy open road | I never raised my voice | I never pointed my finger

Some ladies from the nursery came out when they saw her crying and asked what the issue was. We both told our sides of the story and I said I’d like for the police to come, she said she would call the police.

I was worried as I had a 9:15am meeting to attend and this whole saga was dragging on forever, she was on the phone for a long time and in that time, I was just having banter with the ladies from the nursery.

I was happy to simply overlook the whole thing and drive away as upon inspection of my car it was a minor scrape so not the damage I was expecting to see when she hit me. I didn’t see the damage to her car as it’s facing away from me and I didn’t want to go in her direction so she doesn’t justify her ludicrous accusation.

If we had a reasonable conversation, I was happy to overlook and just drive away but there was no opportunity for a dialogue as she switched on her Amy Cooper mode from the get go.

I mentioned to the ladies that I am worried about my kid getting to school late and they suggested I could just leave and they will explain to the police. I responded saying:

‘No, I will stay here. I am a black guy, this is a white lady crying uncontrollably and if the police show up and she narrates her false version and I am not here to say mine, it is guaranteed they will show up at my door and I will be in some serious trouble’

They were speechless as they didn’t expect such a response but I explained to them why I feel this way. The ladies were nice and got one of the nursery’s staff member to take my kid to school while I waited for the police to show up.

Out of nowhere, a car came to a screeching halt in front of us! The driver simply left the car in the middle of the road, jumped out and came right at me and in my mind my only thought was ‘oh this is not good’ but I kept on a brave face.

With fingers pointing right in my face, with no social distancing observed (hey COVID is out there), he got as close as he could to me and shouted ‘YOU! should be ashamed of yourself’ and I just laughed it off thinking this dude is a joke.

He then went on ranting about how his partner called him crying and saying she’s been threatened by a guy. ‘Shame on you he screamed’. I bet if the other ladies were not standing by, he would have punched me as he looks like a man’s man.

I said ‘whatever you do pal, do not touch me or my car’

He said ‘I will ffff you and your ffffing car up, you are a disgrace’

I genuinely found the whole thing amusing as this guy was huffing and puffing and going back and forth inspecting both cars and making an absolute fool of himself.

It then dawned on me that the lady didn’t call the police after all, she was speaking to her partner all this while and there was no police coming.

His ranting got so bad that the ladies were asking him to calm down, his partner was BEGGING him to calm down and to stop escalating the situation. He told her ‘shut the ffff up and get in the car’ which I found interesting coming from a guy who said I should be ashamed of myself.

After a while I decided to put a stop to the show and asked what do you guys want. He then replied back saying ‘You think you can do insurance fraud on us right?’. That was a shock and then I realised what had happened.

She must have told him the truth on the call, she must have said she hit me by accident. He never at any point blamed me for the accident but rather he believed I was trying to milk the situation for insurance fraud. This is funny because I’d rather take a small loss than deal with insurance people but I guess since I’m a black guy, he just had to think I was trying to commit a crime. Hilarious stuff!

Something that annoyed him as well was the fact that I was not reacting to all his big man antics, I simply folded my hands behind my back, enjoyed the show and laughed every now and again. A few times he said ‘You think you are a smart ass right, keep smiling and I’ll knock that smile off your ffffing face’. Guess he figured out I was leaving him to act a fool for all to see.

I said, ‘right, if the police is not coming and you guys are OK I think I’ll start going’. I went to the lady and said ‘hey sorry for all the drama, I never meant to threaten you and for the record, I did not threaten you as I never even came close to you but sorry anyway for feeling threatened’.

She then went into full apology mode. She must have felt terribly bad and maybe her conscience made her do it…who knows. She shook my hands and was itching for a hug but I said oh we can’t, there’s COVID…oh pause…at this point, the guy was absolutely raging with anger at the fact that we have resolved everything without his BIG MAN input and he just stormed off to his car.

I went to meet him and said ‘hey I didn’t hit your lady’s car but it’s unfortunate she called you because we could have resolved this if she just spoke to me’.

I shook his hand, thanked the ladies, wished everyone a good rest of the day, jumped in the car and sped off as I was now at the risk of being late for my meeting.

Why did I share this story?

1.??????Prejudice. This lady saw me, a black guy and just decided to do an Amy Cooper for no good reason instead of apologising for hitting my car, she figured if she cried wolf, everyone will believe I hit her car and threatened her. Absolutely disgraceful.

2.??????Her partner, the BIG MAN simply assuming I wanted to do insurance fraud, why? Because I am a Black man. He wouldn’t think that if I was a clean cut white guy.

We need to learn to remove prejudice when dealing with others, we have unconsciously learnt prejudice all our lives and we need to consciously unlearn it.?