Christian Cooper, the black man who recorded his unnecessarily tense interaction with a white woman in New York City's Central Park on Memorial Day after he asked her to put her dog on a leash, said on The View Thursday that he has accepted Amy Cooper's apology.
"I do accept her apology. It's a first step. I think she’s got to do some reflection on what happened," Cooper said. "Up until the moment when she made that statement and made that phone call, it was just a conflict between a birder and a dog-walker. And then she took it to a very dark place, and I think she's got to sort of examine why and how that happened."
Christian Cooper discussed the woman's "I'm not a racist" stance with CNN's Don Lemon on Tuesday.
"I think her apology is sincere," Christian told CNN's Don Lemon Tuesday night. "I'm not sure that in that apology she recognizes that while she may not be or consider herself a racist, that particular act was definitely racist," he said.
"And the fact that that was her recourse at that moment -- granted, it was a stressful situation, a sudden situation -- you know, maybe a moment of spectacularly poor judgment," Christian continued. "But she went there and had this racist act that she did."
Amy, who has since been fired from her job at the investment firm Franklin Templeton, has also received death threats, which Christian believes should "stop immediately."
"I am told there has been death threats and that is wholly inappropriate and abhorrent and should stop immediately," he said. Christian explained on The View that her judgment towards him aligns with a knee-jerk racist reaction that black people across this country have experienced for centuries now.
It's not really about her and her poor judgment in a snap second," he said. "It's about the underlying current of racism and racist perception that has been going on for centuries and that permeates the city and this county that she tapped into, and so that's what we really have to address."
