There are very few times that I want to scream racism. I personally want to believe that there might be something else to it, that it isn't hatred because of race, but hatred because of something else, that uses race as more of a proxy to that hate. But this story about a Louisiana Judge, who says he will not marry a interracial couple, and says he would not ever marry any interracial couple, because "I just don't believe in mixing the races that way", screams racism, or at the very lest an extreme prejudice against the idea of white and black couples living together. The best is his explanations as to why he does "believe in mixing the races that way"
Follow me across the fold, for the full story, and analysis:
I never thought in 2009, that we would have such an issue as this. I thought the previous ideals of pure races, or not mixing of the races, where long removed from mainstream thought. I thought that interracial couples, were accepted, approved of, and thought as just normal people loving one another in marriage. But this is just amazing.
This is not a tea-bagger, or racist idiot on the internet, but this is a judge (Justice of the Peace) saying that. A person with actual power is denying (By means of not marrying them, although they have other options, in a round about way, he is denying them) an interracial couple the right to marry. And for what reason you may ask?
From newser.com
A justice of the peace in rural Louisiana says he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.
Concern for the children?? So now a multiracial child is somehow at risk?? I am a multiracial American, and the simple thought that somehow I am a black-eye on America, or whatever reason this judge does not want multiracial child running around, pisses me off! Multiracial child are not some weird creature or in any more danger than the single race child, so what concerns can this idiot possibly have?
He tries to justify it, as the parents don't stay together, and that hurts the kids. And that society won't accept Multiracial children:
From newser.com
Keith Bardwell says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
From Zimbo.com
He continued, "There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage. I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."
Well what experience does he have in those manners? He says he won't marry interracial couples, and he obviously is not in an interracial marriage himself, so I wonder what experience he has?
From newser.com
Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.
And somehow we (Multiracial Americans) are not accepted in society? I wonder since when. I have been accepted just fine, I wonder what the hell he is talking about? It isn't he doesn't think society will accept it, it is he just doesn't accept it! It is like people like me are a black-eye on society, in his mind. We are not to be allowed to be in existence, according how he frames it. It doesn't sound like concern, it sounds like fear, fear that they will have children, and instead of there being a clear white and black differences, that we all might start looking like more than one race, or looking a little more like each other, and that scares this man, it scares the shit out of him.
To me the idea of this is pure and simple racism. He thinks that it's ok if people just stay to their own race, stay within the appropriate racial lines. And I'm sure he would probably say, violence would go down if people didn't move next to people who are not the same race, and then it would be better if they didn't go to the same school, etc. Next thing you know it would be Jim Crow laws circa 2009, instead of what we understand it as now.
Of course I am being a little extreme in this view as to what will happen if this judge had his way, but it is stuff like this, that makes people believe in separation, and that idea is bedded in pure racism. But his attempt at trying to show how, he is actually not racist, is just hilarious to me. The famous, I have black friends, so I can't possibly be racist, but he takes it to the next level
From newser.com
"I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."
Oh so, since they are allowed in your house, and allowed to use your bathroom, that means they aren't racist. And sure you will marry them, just as long as they don't touch anything that is white, they must marry their own kind. I mean this is ridiculous, a judge in America, not some foreign racial motivated country, but AMERICA is denying marriage to people, because he just doesn't like the sight of it, or whatever reason it is.
Personally I never call people racist, but this guy, well he is definitely a believer in extreme prejudice, and at the bare minimum has a backward view on race in America, and needs to be removed for that. At the very worst, he is a racist, hidden or outright, and he has some weird settlement against the idea of a black man/woman marrying a white man/woman.
It just makes me wonder, since I am not pure white, would this judge marry me and a white woman? Probably not, even though I have grew up with nothing but white people, and I will probably end up marrying a white woman, because the fact that this area is 98% white, and most of the people I know are white, but according to this judge, that doesn't matter, it will be a failure from the start, and it shouldn't be allowed.
That is pure, Grade A, packaged up and delivered to your front door, BULLSHIT!! And if I was in Louisiana I would be calling for this man to step down, immediately! This is the not the view of mainstream American, this is not a view a judge should have. This is not the post Civil War, pre Civil Rights south, this is 2009, and this is America. We don't, we shouldn't, we can't, allow for this type of bullshit to be happening right now in America.