Post-Racial America?
On October 8th, a Louisiana justice of the peace, Keith Bardwell, refused to marry a couple in Tangipahoa Parish, due to the fact that they were an interracial couple. Just this Tuesday, Bardwell resigned after weeks of refusing to step down despite calls for his dismissal from officials including the governor.
Bardwell reported to a local Louisiana newspaper, “I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way. 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.” Hmmm….the state of denial is a sad thing. He went on to explain that he refused to marry the couple based on his belief that the children born to such couples will end up suffering. Wow.
Terrance McKay, who was denied the marriage license with his fiancé, Beth Humphrey, said “It was disheartening. Seriously, you know, it’s 2009, and we’re still dealing with a form of racism.” It takes something like this to remind us just how far we have yet to come.
The U.S. Supreme Court tossed out any racially based limitations on marriage in the landmark 1967 Loving v. Virginia case. In the unanimous decision, the court said that “Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the state.”
Bardwell is now under fire from the NAACP and facing possible legal action. ”He’s an elected public official and one of his duties is to marry people. He doesn’t have the right to say he doesn’t believe in it,” Patricia Morris, president of the NAACP branch of Tangipahoa Parish told CNN.
Check out the video…
Tags: interracial marriage, racist
November 5th, 2009 at 2:20 am
It is extremely disheartening that there are people in the world who try to place limits and restrictions on love and union based on their own pre-determined notions about what it may mean for a future that probably has nothing to do with them. Interracial couples shouldn’t be considered special cases. They are no less deserving of the blessing of matrimony than any couple who shares the same racial background. It just goes to show that racism has manifested itself in so many different ways, that their are instances when people don’t even understand that they are being discriminatory. But still, there is no excuse for his ignorance, and his actions, especially as a elected official of the state are not justified in any way.