Louisiana interracial marriage case revives southern stereotypes
By Patrik Jonsson | 10.17.09
Ever wonder why jokes about the South and “rednecks” persist?
Look no further than Keith Bardwell, the Louisiana justice of the peace who refused to marry an interracial couple because he was worried about how their kids would cope. “I’m not a racist,” the judge said. He even lets black people use his bathroom, he said.
Sure, the underlying tenets of humor about the South has a bit to do with the insecurity of the North facing a virile Sunbelt economy that, up until recently, had a major influence on national and presidential politics.
But the political defeat of the Southern-based Republican party has given a little more leeway to poke fun at the South. Of course, that task is only made easier by the fact that some Southerners can’t help but step in it again and again.
The pace has only picked up after the election of President Barack Obama, whose skin color has revealed a usually hidden strain of racism that remains present in the South. (Regionalism, if not racism, seems mutual: Besides White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, an Alabamian, real down-home Southerners are a rarity in the Obama inner circle.)
This week we had the Louisiana judge who somehow had missed the last 30 years — the US Supreme Court outlawed bans on interracial marriages in 1967 — and refused to marry an interracial couple.
“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Mr. Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer, and I won’t help put them through it.”
There was Congressman Joe Wilson’s “You Lie” outburst to President Obama. Judging by his fundraising since, Wilson’s been hailed as a hero even though his comment embarrassed many in South Carolina.
Earlier this year, Rusty DePass, a Republican activist, said a gorilla that escaped from the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, S.C., was an ancestor of Michelle Obama.
The state may pay a steep price for a few local chuckles in such cases, warns Brian Hicks, a columnist for the Post and Courier in Charleston. He writes:
“A loudmouthed minority of Neanderthals and sore losers have so poisoned the national discourse with their racist rantings, crude jokes and veiled threats that they have sullied South Carolina’s reputation more than any governor, congressman or senator could ever imagine. So, thanks for that.”
Okay, it’s always fun to kick the South and its sympathizers around when they’re down. (See: Reconstruction). But sometimes, even people here in the South agree, the criticism is more than warranted.
The darker side, says Truthout’s Michael Hittleman, is that recent pratfalls in the South hint that “the Republican’s 1968 ‘Southern strategy’ has morphed into the Southern Democratic Party’s 1860 strategy … reminiscent of the antebellum South.”
Of course, to a majority in the South, that’s not funny — and neither is Mr. Bardwell’s refusal to marry the couple. Many of the 77 percent of Americans who support interracial marriage, according to Gallup, live in the South.
Realizing that Southerners playing into the hands of late-night monologists can be politically damaging to a party trying to be more diverse and inclusive, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other state officials have criticized Bardwell for his beliefs, and have called for his resignation.
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2. Joe N. | 10.17.09
Actually, it has entirely to do with condescention, and little else. Even living as far north as the Washington DC suburbs, that we still have to put up with “brash” New Yorkers thinking themselves smart and funny, who feign a kind of shock that we wear shoes and walk on our hind legs. It’s commonly called mental autoerotic winky-winky. One wonders if they understand just how common, retrograde, and feeble the pervasiveness of organized crime, corruption, and gross racketerring is in the north.
As for the Justice ‘O Peace story in Louisiana, it’s really starting to look like a political stunt, a case of someone thinking that they ‘punked’ a man widely known in the locality to be an isolated retrograde character out of central casting. Even if it isn’t a political stunt, it grew into one based on teh fact that after 3 days CNN is still droning on about it, probably to give one newsreader after another a platform to tch-rch while they try to talk about themselves.
I wonder if THEY realize that the rest of the population wear shoes, walk on their hind legs.
3. Ken Peterson | 10.18.09
When this sort of thing happens and it gets national attention it’s a credit to the times in which we live and to the changes in attitudes that have happened over the past 50 years. Ignorance should be chased down and rooted out wherever it’s found - in the N, S, E, or W. This is a battle that’s never won but that must always be joined to keep us moving forward.
4. Herman Lobste | 10.18.09
The simplest way to bring racial discord to a more harmonial balance is more mixed marriages resulting in more mixed offsrping. That is likly he only way we will see our similarities more clearly than our differences. I have heard Judge Outoftouch’s arument before (when I was 10 years old in 1970) and I am pretty sure it holds no water (quite the opposite)except in the recesses of a feeble old mind such as his. The offspring of these type marriages are usually very good looking people who appeal to both races (think Tiger and Barack and mulatto women are some of the most beautiful n the world) That said it is the responsibility of these parents with mixed racial offspring to raise their children well just as it is with anyone who decides to procreate.
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Jimmy Orr has worked in politics for the majority of his professional career working for two U.S. Senators, two Governors and one President. Most recently, Orr served as White House Spokesman and Internet Director for President George W. Bush and Special Advisor to Governor Schwarzenegger for Internet Communications.
David Cook is Washington bureau chief of The Christian Science Monitor and host of the Monitor's newsmaker breakfasts. He was the Monitor's editor from 1994 to 2001. Cook is a graduate of Principia College, served in the U.S. Army, was a Bagehot Fellow at Columbia University, and is a member of the Gridiron Club, Washington's oldest journalistic organization.
1. Rob | 10.17.09
The entire South shouldn’t be judged by a few individuals. I am black and I haven’t yet seen any real racism directed at me. Sure you will always have a few haters but that is true of any minority. I have also observed that it is usually older people who still cling to race. I cant really blame them since they were raised that way and find it hard to accept black people as equals. Maybe with the next generation this will no longer be a problem.