I was going to blog today about Geert Wilders, but then my eye was caught by this astonishing story: “Anger at US mixed marriage ‘ban”. Keith Bardwell, a white Justice of the Peace in the US state of Louisiana, refuses to issue marriage licences for mixed race couples on the grounds that any children they may have may not be accepted by their parents’ communities. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it,” says Bardwell, who nevertheless insists that he has “piles of black friends”. “They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom,” he says. Fancy — even letting “them” go to the loo in his own house.
Incredibly, no one ever seems to have called Bardwell to account for operating this policy, which, besides being repulsive, is of course illegal — and he’s been a JP for 34 years. It was only after a couple consulted a lawyer on being refused a licence by him that his case was raised, and is now being taken up by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People).
Stories like this crop up from time to time and are often dismissed as being so awful and extreme that they don’t have to be taken very seriously: people with such views are isolated crazies, tends to be the line. When Italy’s Northern League proposed putting limits on the number of mixed marriages in January, one former colleague with impeccable left-wing credentials pretty much told me not to be silly when I raised the subject. ( I wrote about it at the time, here.) As the League is, and was then, an important partner in Silvio Berlusconi’s government, I was astonished. Italy is not so far away, and the rising profile of the BNP leads one to suspect that there are probably quite a few people in the UK who would have some sympathy both for the League and for Bardwell — who naturally insists that he’s not a racist, he just doesn’t “believe in mixing the races that way”.
It is possible that Bardwell means well — we probably all know otherwise kind and gentle souls of a certain age who don’t see their “it isn’t fair on the children” line as bigoted — but even if we extend him that latitude, such an attitude only perpetuates the prejudice. Bardwell is also of the opinion that mixed-race marriages don’t last long. I’m sure that all of us whose skin colour is of a different hue to our wife’s or husband’s would beg to differ . . . and happily prove him wrong as the anniverary milestones pass by.
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