Racism Is Still Alive In America

A Louisiana judge, Keith Bardwell, from the Tangipahoa parish is yet another symptom that racism is still a problem in America in 2009, despite the election of the first African-American President.

Justice of the peace Bardwell is now in the middle of a growing controversy, likely to end his career, after refusing to give a marriage license to an interracial couple. Barwell said he denied the license “out of concern for the couple’s future children.” Bardwell insists that he is not a racist, and that he has a lot of Black friends that he “welcome to his house, and even let them use the bathroom.”

“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage. I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it,” said Bardwell. What Mr. Bardwell should comprehend is that one of the children of such marriages, between a white women & a black man, is our current President. It seems that he did pretty well in compensating for what Mr. Bardwell views as a birth handicap.

The couple, Beth Humphrey and Terrence McKay, has expressed that they will contact the US Justice Department to file a discrimination complaint. “That was one thing that made this so unbelievable. It is not something you expect in this day & age,” said Humphrey.

The ACLU has asked the Louisiana Judiciary Committee for an investigation in the case.

“It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009. The Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that the government cannot tell people who they can or cannot marry,” said ACLU’s Katie Schwartzmann.

She is referring to the case of Mildred Loving and her husband Richard, whose landmark lawsuit against the State of Virginia led to a Supreme Court decision in 1967 in favor of interracial couples’ right to marry.

The ruling was 42 years ago, and it was critical in the overall context of the civil rights movement. However, this case is a reminder that America has still a very long way to go, even 42 years later, to become a color blind society.