Woman Calls Police On Black Man Babysitting Two White Kids
A woman racially profiled a black man babysitting two white kids
Another day, another instance of a white person calling the police on a black person who is just doing some normal thing. This time, it’s babysitting.
A Georgia woman called the cops after seeing a black man with two white kids. Corey Lewis was just babysitting, but that didn’t protect him from being followed, harassed and, ultimately, questioned by the police, all just because a white woman saw him and assumed he was up to no good.
Lewis told NBC he first noticed the woman, who has not been publicly named, staring at him as he took the two kids he was watching and returned to his car after buying them food at Subway. He said the woman drove alongside his car after they left, demanding to speak to the children and asking if they were OK.
“Why wouldn’t they be OK?,” Lewis said he told her. Like a rational human being, he just kept driving, though he documented what was happening in a series of Facebook live videos.
The woman drove off, he said, but it wasn’t long before she returned. This time, he said, she demanded to speak to the older child in his care, but he told her no, you know, because she was a random stranger acting like a legit crazy person and he was in charge of keeping these kids safe. She then said she was taking down his license plate number.
Lewis, still calm and absolutely acting reasonably, just continued to drive home. He said the woman followed him there, and police were also waiting for him when he arrived.
Um, this is insane. This woman literally only called the police because Lewis was black and the kids were white. But if it were a white adult with black kids, would she have made that same judgement call? Probably not. This was racial profiling, plain and simple. And it is despicable.
As far as the children’s parents, David Parker and Dana Mango are in “disbelief.” Mango tells CBS 46, “I said are you saying that because there’s an African American male driving my two white kids, that he was stopped and pulled over and questioned and he said I’m sorry ma’am that’s exactly what I’m saying.” Parker says Lewis was “B-W-B which I guess is the new thing, babysitting while black.” Both parents believe Lewis was stalked and harassed because he was black.
Cobb County Police have not commented on the situation, and they haven’t released any details about the woman. Lewis wasn’t harmed, but he sure doesn’t deserve to be harassed for doing nothing more than taking care of some kids. And this is far from the first time police have been called on a black person for doing something completely inconspicuous and normal. Remember when a white manager called police and two black men were arrested for waiting for a business associate in a Starbucks? Or when a white woman called police to report a black child selling bottled water in her neighborhood? Or when a white man called police on a black mom using her neighborhood pool?
This is an epidemic, and the only way to stop it is to call these people out, hard. Calling police on black people who are doing nothing wrong is racism, plain and simple.
