RACISM IN THE SOUTH? GET OUT OF HERE!

I was reading the news the other day and ran into the case of the Justice of Peace in Louisiana who resigned his post after refusing to marry an interracial couple. When Dear Husband told me about it he wasn’t really incensed but he was a little put out by it since we are an interracial couple ourselves and I just couldn’t muster enough caring to give a damn.

I will be honest and say that maybe since the issue hits so close to home I should be offended, annoyed, outraged, enraged and all those other superlatives, but in reality I am feeling somewhat indifferent about the issue. Not indifferent enough not to talk about it but indifferent enough that it didn’t ruin my day when I read about it and indifferent enough that I actually laughed when I read the article.

I was too busy reading it and trying to wrap my mind around the man’s logic to be able to get pissed off and weeks later I am still not angry at him. See the problem with this guy isn’t that he is racist; his problem isn’t that he is close minded, mean spirited or cruel. I don’t know the man, I don’t think any less or more of him because of his stand. I do not understand why he “worries about the children” of such unions and I truly don’t give a flying fuck. Why I do care about is the fact that he took it upon himself to decide not to marry this couple. The description of his job as a justice of peace isn’t to decide who marries whom; it doesn’t include deciding someone else’s future because of personal misgivings. As a government official he should do what the job requires regardless of how he feels about interracial marriage or the future of the possible offspring. When gay marriage happens all over the U.S. (Don’t bitch, is happening) Justice of Peace like him won’t get to decide to marry a gay couple or not. They shouldn’t be protected by their personal feelings, religious inclination or their inability to grasp why a man would want to marry another man. They should get the job they are being paid for done. They should perform the job and move on to the next couple who hopefully to them will be a man and a woman of the same color that will keep their need for uniformity satisfied.

The problem isn’t that Keith Barthwell refused to marry this couple. The problem is that the Parrish that hired him allowed this to happen before, since by his own words he has refused to marry interracial couples before and referred them to someone else. The problem is that the Parrish that hired him didn’t do a good job at doing check on the man and weren’t aware or didn’t care about his prejudice. He isn’t require to think, feel, ANYTHING he should be blind to anything else but the law who states "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

See that is a thing that happens here in the U.S. that doesn’t happen back home. Back home when a black man marries a white woman or vice versa there is not going to be a Justice of Peace who gives enough of a damn to “take a stand” and not marry them because of their skin color. First people wouldn’t give a damn and second if they did they still wouldn’t care enough not to do it. Indifference works wonders in such cases. Back at home people do not think their inclinations, preferences, racist bias etc, should be respected enough to do something like that. We do not think that because this is what we feel, because this is what our conscience tells us, then the state, the country need to respect it. Citizens in this country feel the country needs to respect whatever brain fart comes out of their mouth which works in some cases and in others simply doesn’t.

I harbor no resentment toward Mr. Barthwell, first because he is an old, set on his way bigot who is not going to change his mind so why bother getting pissed off, and second because the poor man is obviously slow since he doesn’t even recognize his actions and words as racist when he says: “I'm not a racist," "I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house” Well bless his generous heart for being so open minded as to allow the darkies in his living room.

The man is a closed minded fool to be pitied and ignored. Instead he is being sued by a couple who saw an opportunity to make some money out of the situation. If they were truly interested in justice they would sue the Parrish for hiring a racist and allowing him to refuse to marry interracial couples. Instead they are seeking unspecified damages claiming “emotional distress as a result of the incident”.

Give me a fucking break. I don’t think is right that this couple had to be reminded of the narrow mindedness of people the day of their wedding when it should’ve been a happy day for all involved but if all it takes is that to cause emotional distress then I wonder if this emotionally fragile couple should marry at all instead of being institutionalized until they are balanced.

This man was given free reign by the Parrish to decide on his own accord based on his personal beliefs who to marry and who not marry. The Parrish should be the one held responsible for not monitoring this man who abused his power and got away with turning interracial couples away for two and half years. The thing is he is right. He has the right to choose what to believe in. It stinks that what he believes in is stupid, backwards and ignorant, but he is entitled to those beliefs. I don’t like them but since he isn’t riding in the night (as far as I know) in a white hood burning trees and stoning people then I say he is a pretty harmless old bigot like there are all over the world. What he did was wrong disgusting, but he righted that wrong by removing himself from the position that gave him the opportunity to excert his bigotry on other people. I do not believe his stupidity and ignorance means he has to pay the rejected couple any money.

This couple have the opportunity to open the eyes of many in that Parrish of Louisiana, they have the opportunity to bring light to a problem that we all want to believe is gone, but is in reality alive and well all over the country, and instead of choosing to turn this opportunity into something good, they are victimizing themselves and looking for monetary compensation for something that was wrong, annoying, insulting, hurtful but hardly traumatizing. They should, as someone who has been touched by this issue, make sure that the Parrish does a better job at hiring unbiased individuals that won’t put their personal beliefs before the job. Instead they choose to go after a guy who is no longer working as a Justice of Peace in the Parrish and therefore holds no power to repeat his abuse in the future. The Parrish however, holds the power to choose to hire as many bigots as they please. This couple seem to be aware of the fact that is easier to get money from a civil suit to an individual than to sue the government. If justice is what they were after instead of money, they would make the Parrish and the whole freaking State of Louisiana pay for their negligence and indifference. Instead they rather make a few bucks of the dumbass who already quit.

I have nothing else to say on the issue aside from: Mr. Barthwell you needn’t worry about any of the mixed children I may or may not have with my blue-eyed, lily white husband. I assure you any children I have with him will be incredibly smart, bilingual, culturally rich and hot as hell.

To the couple who is suing Mr. Barthwell instead of the Parrish: Shame on you for ignoring justice for the sake of some cash.

For the article please follow the link:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/03/louisiana.interracial.marriage/index.html

DISSAPOINTED

I am equally annoyed by racism as I am for the minorities who choose to use the race card and use racism at the drop of a hat over nothing and be like the kid that cried wolf and got eaten for being a dumbass.

Every single time that I have gotten accused of racism I really want to get violent. I am not a racist, I do not have a bigot bone in my body, something I do not take credit for but thank my mom for being open minded and having a heart of gold. When we were growing up there was a kid in the neighborhood the other kids weren’t allowed to play with because he was gay. He was 10 years old or so and was friends with my brother. He was sweetest, kindest kid and he used to tell us all the time he understood if we didn’t want to be his friend. The kid was also famous because he was on a TV show at the time and had no friends whatsoever. The only house he was allowed in was ours because the moms in the neighborhood thought his “situation” was contagious and they didn’t want him poisoning their kids and turning them fruity. My mom was even stopped and asked to recapitulate and consider the damage this child was doing on my brother’s psyche. My mom gave a rare show of her temper and told them to fuck off.
Stuff like that stays with you. I was taught from a young age not to care about what people are and concentrate on their actions.

I have been living all this time with pink colored glasses because although I have been a target to some ignorant people they have all been so damn dumb is hard to take offense (you cannot blame people for being stupid and racist when they have been fucking their sisters and interbreeding. Bloodlines deteriorate like that, is not their fault). I thought that the majority of us were above racism to a certain point. We have a black president! (I am NOT saying African American) and even though some crazy white people out there were not happy about it, still the great majority of the NORMAL people were okay with it.

I was so freaking mistaken is appalling! And I HATE to be wrong. This lady I know was talking to me about her child and how now that he is about to leave elementary school and start middle she is choosing schools. Apparently her child is “gifted” (aren’t they all?) and she is choosing magnet schools for him. She complained this morning in desperation because all the schools she is thinking about are all “black” schools? What do you mean? I asked thinking it stood for something. “They are all full of blacks”. I stood there thinking she was going to laugh (She voted for Obama!!) but she wasn’t. She was being serious! She meant it. She didn’t want her “gifted” child to associate with black people. I turned around and came to my computer to type this. As I do it she is still right now still complaining to others about it. She says the schools have “nothing but black people in it” What does she expect? For them to have their own school? For segregation to start again so her part Puerto Rican, part German, part Jewish and part BLACK child can go to school with people with her same skin color? The fact that the woman’s father is part black is just flabbergasting.

I have been so silly! I thought all this time that when some complained about being discriminated against it was just whining and complaining and manipulating those still ridden with “white guilt”. I thought that some were taking advantage of the fact that now everyone has to be extremely P.C. and everyone’s scared of being sued and everyone is scared of being accused of being racist, or sexist, of bigoted. I thought things were moving forward! Shame on me for being so stupid.

As I write this I remember another “friendship” that ended because of a similar issue. I was friends with a woman I met on ESOL classes when I first came to the country. She was Colombian and was married to a blond blue eyed Gringo who was simply gorgeous (kinda like me). They had two little girls about to start elementary school and one day we were driving around an area an hour away from where we lived and they were thinking of moving to. They were looking for schools and were checking out the playgrounds of some of them. After playground number four I asked “What the heck are we doing?” and he said. “I’m counting the blacks” and proceeded to tell me that there were more black children than white and therefore the school was unacceptable. She nodded her head at his brand wisdom and sighed at the trouble of having to keep looking for a school with enough whites.

I looked at the kids playing in the playground and felt incredibly and horribly guilty of being in that car sharing my air with those disgusting people that had seemed so nice and now were judging a school because of a group of 7 year old skin color. They knew nothing of it. They kept playing innocent of the devious minds of adults that should know better but are nonetheless thinking them less because they are black. That was the last time I saw them and never again accepted their invitations to hang out because if I were black they wouldn’t be inviting me anywhere. I guess my brown skin was good enough for them, well their rotted minds and souls are not good enough for me, thank you very much.

I’m feeling a little sad today. I actually liked and respected this fellow Obama supporter, this fellow woman, this fellow shoe lover I spend hours with. We liked the same books, the same movies. I lent her my Ann Rice novels! She and I had even the same virulent temper that sometimes gets away from us.

I feel a little betrayed, a little confused, a little nauseated. Vipers hide everywhere. One never knows where they are, where they hide their poison, when they’ll strike. I guess this will show Dear Husband why I don’t trust anybody, because inevitably some of them show their true colors, and theirs are never black and always ugly.