DON'T Do It for the Children

Mmkay, so a Louisiana justice of the peace refuses to marry interracial couples in 2009 because he "says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long." Interesting... I was unaware that the 50% divorce rate in America was due to the 7% of marriages that are classified as interracial.

Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish,told the Daily Star of Hammond that he was not a racist. "I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house," Bardwell said. "My main concern is for the children."

Is he concerned for the potential children of two white drug addicts or two black ex-convicts who ask to be married? If the couple signed an affidavit stating that they did not plan to reproduce, would he then marry them? If my senior citizen mother wanted to marry a white man, would that be okay? Oh, wait! Mother stays away from Louisiana—lest they revoke her Negro card.

I wonder how he determines the race of the couple? Many members of my family are what people call "racially ambiguous." If you put us in a room with black folks—we're black; with white folks we're white, Latinos, Mediterraneans, etc. Neither my driver's license nor certified birth certificate lists my race, so would he just guess?

Well, if I go from personal experience I can say this: three of my four grandparents were the products of interracial marriages. The fourth was a quadroon or whatever you want to call it. All of their parents enjoyed domestic bliss (they were not legally allowed to marry) until they were separated from their spouses by death. Perhaps I am biased. but all of my grandparents turned out just fine and on both sides of my family, my grandparents were married for more than 50 years until one of the spouses died.

I can understand Mr. Bardwell's concern for the children, though. After all, does the world really need more people like Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Halle Berry, Lenny Kravitz, Wentworth Miller, Mariah Carey, Amanda Marshall, Emily King, Eartha Kitt, Dorothy Dandridge, Derek Jeter, W.E.B. DuBois, Fredrick Douglass, Adam Clayton Powell, Bob Marley, Walter Mosley, Soledad O'Brien, my BFF Carmen, my dear friend Brooke's girls or Kyle's children or My L'il Sis M's son or any of my family members? Yeah—okay. Lookout Mr. Bardwell... We're coming atcha with all of our interracial love!