Well, this was a lovely story to greet me in my Facebook newsfeed this morning. Not.
NEW ORLEANS – A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.
Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “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.”
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.
I mean, not only is he a supreme racist doofus, he’s hit at least 6 squares on Stupid White Folks Bingo. Now that’s just not fair!
And “they use my bathroom”? What The Fucking Hell Fuck?? WTFHF is up with that? That’s not even on the bingo card it’s so supremely offensive and idiotic and stupid and I’m running out of adjectives here.
But in all seriousness, I’m not sure if it’s significant that this was a white woman and a Black man getting married. Most of the racist anti-mixed marriage bullshit is not only about “the children” (Please! Somebody think of the children!) but about white womanhood and the white supremacist notions of white women as the carriers of the next generation of white babies. It also fits in neatly with sexism against white women, in need of protection from hostile males of all races, and particularly the mythology of Black men and white women.
Full story here.
See the article and comments on Racialicious.
And for those with strong stomachs, read the comments after the article from the Hammond Daily, the local newspaper. To be fair, most are on the side of those With A Fucking Brain. But many are not. My favourite: “I personally disagree with him but at least he’s standing up for what he believes in.”
I need to go lie down now. Or at the very least, get my diversity mallet out and do some head-smashing.
