After racist park encounter, Chris Cooper takes us birding in Central Park l GMA Digital

I believe we have an orchard Oriole up here not just a Baltimore Oriole yep Porcha toriel toriel that's what's been singing that's what threw me off it's not an indigo bunting not a northern water thrush I'm embarrassed I even suggested those things that's an orchard Oriole that's what's been singing we're going there you know I sort of had a decision to make which is you know do I capitulate to this attempt at racial intimidation or do I just keep doing what I'm doing unfortunately for her I mean she basically she pulled the pin on the hand grenade of race and tried to lob it at me and instead it blew up in her face come on I've been here for so many years so many times I had so many wonderful experiences you know how can one flare up possibly you know overwhelm all those years of other associations I've been birding since I was roughly 10 years old yeah nature was always big in our household but for some reason with me I took the form of birds there's a flicker up here great crested fly catches American Redstart he's still up there you can hear him singing if you listen it's very high pitch it's the bird going up into the branches and I'm being totally confused but it doesn't it doesn't something it's um it just doesn't have quite them that it's a battle spider flycatcher yeah right up there on the bear branch not seeing when you have to spring and I was getting a little irritated problem saw the other thing you have in New York City is skyscrapers that was the ovenbird again if I stop if I shut up for a while maybe we'll actually hear it you're a tasty treat eat your teeth that was the oven bird and when we let this guy go through except he shouldn't be riding his bike but I'm not going there today right there see now this guy has obviously been fed by people in this park cuz he thinks we've got snacks for him that's why he's coming so close it's like deliver or I'm gone and he's gone so I had just left the pitstop bathrooms over there I was walking down this way I'd actually pretty much finished my birding for the day so I was on my way out of the park I was walking along here and I heard this woman shouting a dog's name at the top of her lungs sure sign that the dog is off the leash here in the ramble which is a protected area you see what those two people are walking right now that's about where she was and you'll see right there is a sign that says duds must be on the leash at all times that's where the dog was running around in the plantings so you know basically at this point I decided I'm gonna record because that's what some of us have been doing is is you know taking out our iPhones and recording the scofflaw behavior so that we can document it and push for some change and you have to understand this is a conflict that's been going on for years I'm trying to look for birds up here and with me and we tried to document it so that we can say hey look this is what's going on in the ramble but dogs supposed to be only song time so I pull out that phone she didn't like that at all not one bit please don't come close to me please please call the cops please call the clowns please tell them whatever you like [Music] her attempt to threaten and weaponize the police against a black man because it was a racist yeah but does that define her entire life I don't know and now here you have this woman who we've all seen the video now blatantly blatantly knew how to use the power of her whiteness to threaten the life of another man in his blackness she knew that that was a threat she could tap into and she did even though she considered herself or considers herself a liberal so that's that's telling about how deep it rains and how much work we all have to do if we're gonna root it out but it's gonna be hard nobody I don't I don't know that anybody has the answer and how we fix this how we change it but we gotta do something because we're dying ovenbird Chiti Chiti Chiti Chiti alright enough of that let's look at birds good again it was just a red-eyed Vireo singing of this way but can you know the difference between the two sounds one is throaty and lower the others high pitch so you start to tune into things like that it takes time but eventually it's sort of like you know when your mom calls you up on the phone she doesn't have to say this is your mother she just says hi dear because of the tone of the voice because of what she says cuz she always answers the phone that way you know instantly who it is it's the same with the birds birds belong to everybody nobody owns the birds they're there for all of us to enjoy all of us to get out there and appreciate just the idea of inclusion for everybody you know regardless of race color creed religion sexual orientation disability status you know everybody should be seen because everybody is here for me because I'm gay myself you know there was not a lot of gay representation in comics I introduced I think the first human gay character in Star Trek I wrote created and wrote a horror series from Marvel called Darkhold pages from the book of sins Victoria Montes heir to the montessori line who have been fighting the book through the generations turns out she was a lesbian lesbian character so it was a lot of fun to do that to introduce her because up until then there hadn't been a lot of lesbian characters i incent in the scope of things is minor it's a little desk up in the park but people like George Floyd you know people like Ahmad Arbor II wasn't minor they lost their lives over this kinda stuff and it keeps happening and yet we don't seem to be able to change the dynamic to alter that deep underlying vein of racial bias the woman in the video apologized to Cooper saying it was unacceptable and I humbly and fully apologize to everyone who's seen that video everyone that's been offended everyone who thinks of me in a lower light and I understand why they do you know and words are just words and I can't undo what I did but I sincerely and humbly apologize to everyone [Music] [Music] you [Music] well hey there GMA fans Robin Roberts here thanks for checking out our YouTube channel lots of great stuff here so go on click the subscribe button right over right over here to get more of awesome videos and content from GMA every day anytime we thank you for watching and we'll see you in the morning on GMA

Channel: Good Morning America

Views: 561,060

Rating: 4.9153104 out of 5

Keywords: man, whose, bird, watching, trip, ruined, racist, incident, returns, central, park, chris, cooper, encounter, woman, karan, viral, leash, dog, racism, african, american, threatening, life, abc, news, gma, good, morning, america, p_cmsid=2494279, p_vid=news-71290194, Central Park Karen

Id: -qd2XyGFTzk

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Sad, but also really sweet. I needed that today.