First white women can be just as harsh as white men toward black people, some in the medical profession believe black women do not feel pain the way white women do and white women are somehow weaker than black women. Studies appear to indicate the constant stress of living while black appears to play a part in the cause of underweight babies among black women. America has a very high infant and mother mortality rate compared to other developed countries and it is black babies, infants and mothers causing the high number of deaths.
You raise good questions and many who are the first to state they are not racist get upset when you point out that some of what they say is indeed divisive and hurtful.
My opinion is kinder than yours, I think she profiled the black man with the white children. If he lives in a mostly white area I'd be even more inclided to think she was profiling. Just btdt. A friend of mind worked at a daycare in the University of Washington district in Seattle back in the early 1980. There were a couple of black kids, a few Asians and the majority were white. He kept a low profile but one evening he was shopping at the local Safeway and from the other end of the store this white kid starts yelling and breaks away from his parents and runs hell bent for leather right up to my friend, who was 6' tall, bald, very muscular and black. He knows the kid from daycare so thinks nothing of scooping him into his arms - all the children LOVED him. I thought the kids parents were gonna blow a casket. He explained he worked at the daycare where they took their kid. So, yeah, they took there kid outta that daycare and said it was cause they had a black man supervising the kids and they did not think it was appropiate. He never lost and kids in his charge, he played with the kids and he never had a problem getting the kids to listen. It did not pay well but he loved the kids and they loved him but he left rather than cause a fuse.

Wow: You raise some big-ticket, important questions. I often see these "disconnects" in people's ideas and behavior, yet still am taken by surprise (maybe that's the optimist in me ...). People can be bad at "connecting the dots" in general, and more so if doing that forces you to see your own "internal contradictions," which I think most of us have. We have a huge capacity for cognitive dissonance, comfortably living with competing or contradictory ideas in our heads, and that probably saves us time and sanity with the little stuff. On these higher levels, however, it leads to hypocrisy, and blindness to our hypocrisy. That's why it's good to think and talk about this, especially as it affects how we treat each other, and also remember our values. (My folks were refugees, and growing up, I really wanted to fit in. Yet, I grew up in a very diverse area of East Los Angeles, so there were lots of models of how to live all around me. My lifelong takeaways are a tendency to look for what I have in common with people, including our issues and struggles, yet an appreciation of our differences, which give us a chance to learn from and teach each other, as well as build alliances.) Thanks for this.

I think it's the cops job to check any and all calls when it involves the protection of children within reason. When they take the call and suspect that the call is being made by a bigot? I not sure how all this works with the cops? what is the criteria? It seems to me that the person taking the call would ask what reason the woman had to suspect the children were being held against their will and at that point make a decision. This is a complicated part of the situation that needs some research and education. I would also like to see the cop make the woman who made the call apologize to this man and the children and if she refuses to be issued some sort of ticket for bigotry/profiling. I am sorry for this man, I have interracial children and it breaks my heart when they suffer this type of demeaning situation. I bet those two kids will be compelled in their future to protect vulnerable people. I disagree about your assumption that the woman who made the call would be a supporter of Dr. Ford but quite the opposite. I am glad you brought this subject up, without discussion and research I see no other ways to unravel this mess of a knot.

Well done on the doctorate by the way

My sister is mixed (Same Mum different Dads) she babysat my three a lot. They have stayed at hers and I never ever thought about it once. Her boys have stayed here a few times and youngest is very popular with the local kids as he is an excellent footie player. The idea seems so incredibly alien to me. I just cannot relate to it at all. It makes me feel angry that anyone would question such a fine young man. There are lots of racists here in UK and the police have done a lot of investigations into institutionalised racism within themselves as an organisation. I understand what you said about the different movements which in their own ways are challenging inequality, racism and sexual abuse. There are similarities between the movements intended aims and some differences. I absolutely agree with your assertion that the fight for female sufferage did not include women of colour or (in this country especially), working class women. The thing is they are an evolutionary step in the right direction. The civil rights movement in USA, allowed other groups to talk about and eventually demand equality (women, LGBT people, disabled people etc). If we believe in human rights we have to accept human rights for all, we have to keep demanding it.

It’s very difficult for me as a white person to understand what it must be like to be black. I grew up with a racist father who called black people “colored” until his death in 2003. Sometimes I catch myself stereotyping minorities on first appearance and I have to remind myself that I shouldn’t judge without knowing the person. But what if I didn’t have that ability? Suppose I just accepted my upbringing without question and had no experiences to change my thinking? That’s one possible way you get bad stories like the one involving the babysitter. I’m not saying it’s an excuse - still horrible. As for the professor, is it possible she just thought you were very gifted and it wasn’t about race? My honest two cents.

What does this have to do with the Kavanaugh confirmation?

You are certainly not ranting or rambling. What the fuck is wrong with us when we fight for our own rights but leave others behind? To quote Ani DiFranco: "We are fighting on different fronts of the same war." If we could recognize that, we could make real progress. The toxicity of privilege is that we don't see our own. We only see our own victimhood, and we fail to recognize our own biases. If we cannot honestly acknowledge our own prejudice, we can never overcome it.

I think many white folks, I among them, have embedded and unconscious prejudices which even those of us who rail against it have to keep an eye out for. Other races probably have similar prejudices, but, they have not had the softening touch of white privilege. I grew up in a poorer white family with a very anti prejudice father who I watched rip into racists in the 60's; he got away with it because 1) he could be a bit of a bad ass and 2) he was a decorated WWII veteran. Enough said. Your prof probably never noticed her inner self.
Short antidote: I taught at the same school where my kids and many of their friends attended. My one son's best friend was and is biracial. A certain teacher, dumbshit, at the time Mormon but now back to Jewish, commented that Bodie wasn't really black because he he attended a private, liberal school. To which I just went WTF, he still lives in the community. Bonehead still held his belief. Same guy who told my same son's other friend he couldn't put down Puerto Rican on college admissions because he was white. I told JJ, put it down because your mom is 100 percent Puerto Rican and your grandparents (granddad a Colonal in the islands police force). No excuse for stupid people, even with educations.
Anyway, your assertion holds water. We all hold inner prejudices; some hold more than others. It is something we "should" and need to be aware about ourselves.

This man was Absolutely correct not to let a stranger talk to the children, his or anybody else's. The fact that she is a nasty racist just proves that he was correct To keep her away from them.
And if my tax dollars were being spent on "answering calls" like this one, I would be asking if we have too big a police force, let's save some money!