piles and piles of black friends

[intertribal]

Heard about this from Kissing Suzy Kolber, of all places:

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.

Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.

"There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage," Bardwell said. "I think those children suffer and I won't help put them through it."

If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.

"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.

You heard the man!  You let one interracial marriage go through soon they're all gonna want an interracial marriage!  He's just tryin' to protect the little halfbreeds from being born!

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing a story like this maybe a decade ago, about a high school that maybe wanted to prevent interracial dating for a prom or something? And one mixed-race (I hate this term, but basically I hate the term "race"; it's a spurious leftover 19th century term from when people believed there were such things as races--and even then, it was used haphazardly, as in "the Irish race" and other nitwittery)... ahem, where was I... one girl with a black parent and a white parent said, "Well, who am I supposed to date, then?" and the principal said something along the lines of "Yeah, well, that's the problem, isn't it. Your parents made a big mistake."

Hateful.

When we lived in Japan in the early 1990s, I remember a lovely newspaper photo spread of kids who where "mixes"--kids with all kinds of interesting parentage, growing up all over. So much variety in how people can look, a thousand different skin tones, eye-nose-mouth shapes, hair textures---gorgeous. Why can't everyone LOVE that variety. I HATE the notion of pure ANY thing. (except food. I don't want weird contamination in my food.)

[royinpink.livejournal.com]

I heard about it via Facebook (via Jason). Aside from obvious racism: I hate arguments that stem from 'But we're just trying to protect them from suffering.' It always leads to varying degrees of stupid shit, like this. Life needs suffering.

Sidenote: We're doing race relations in the U.S. in my Listening class. I got sick of hearing racial stereotypes, basically.