Cowboy Confessional

Old bigotries never die, they just metamorph into more nuanced prejudice.

The problem is that old bigots fade about as slowly.

I am assuming that Keith Bardwell is an older man. Bardwell notes that he has been a justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana for 34 years. Assuming that Bardwell was not elected at birth (and given Louisiana politics and corruption, this is not out of the question) he is likely approaching or has achieved dotage. Thus some of the peculiar notions onto which old folks cling are understandable.

Until those notions are inflicted upon the citizenry.

Down south where Bardwell dwells as I once did, race relations are a messy affair. When Dixiecrats and other dinosaurs roamed the swamps, racial hatred was institutionalized in many pockets of prejudice. These districts, which thanks to George Wallace included the better part of Alabama, were the functional minority. Most southerners had worked together for centuries and were largely unaffected by race. Some of our ugly minded cousins occasionally obtained office – either public, in their local Klan chapter, or both simultaneously. These Crackers with Credentials were the unfortunate face of The South and ones which modern media amplified into an unrealistic caricature of southerners in general.

That’s the media’s job – the amplification their own prejudices.

Over the eons, as air conditioning permitted Yankees to relocate in the lowest of the 48, the myth of wall-to-wall racists faded. When one of the few and rapidly dwindling dimwits sounded, the majority of honorable southerners would wince in embarrassment while reaching for a shotgun. Yes, bigots are stupid, but they are bright enough to understand the downside of buckshot.

With the possible exception of Keith Bardwell. I fear intelligence has stealthfully bypassed him, which explains why the only work he can find is in elected office.

Being a justice of the peace is lowest rung on the judicial ladder and mainly involves paperwork and petty crime adjudication. One of Bardwell’s burdens is to pass out marriage licenses, a nominal task as the only criteria for obtaining one is that both parties are adults and that neither is already married to someone else (the latter being negotiable in parts of Utah). Ancillary issues are not criteria for denial of a license to surrender your freedom and happiness via wedlock.

Except in Tangipahoa Parish.

Seems a 30+ couple came to Bardwell seeking the requisite paperwork to legally bind them together … and were refused. Bardwell, scraping together what only in his alleged mind could pass for logic, said that that his concern was for any children the interracial couple might spawn (which shows Bardwell is completely unaware of out-of-wedlock birth rate in his state – a lack of marriage being no obvious barrier to bayou babies). His assertion is that mixed race progeny are problematic, saying “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”

Then in a fit of oxymoronic muttering Bardwell claimed “I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way.”

Ignoring for a moment that justices of the peace are not empowered to make such judgments nor deny a license outside of legislative criteria, we must wonder foremost if the allegedly good people of Tangipahoa Parish had any inkling of Bardwell’s mental illness. The parish is not minor backwater after all. There are over 100,000 people residing there and household incomes indicate that Tangipahoa tenants are at least properly educated, a benefit forsaken by Bardwell.

“I didn’t tell this couple they couldn’t get married. I just told them I wouldn’t do it.”

What makes Bardwell’s buffoonery amusing is that the sitting governor of Louisiana is an East Indian, and several shades darker than the man Bardwell refused to license. Since Jindal is a Republican, Bardwell’s Dixiecrat buddies will no doubt find a way to blame this situation on the Governor.

The problem with prejudice is generational. Old men harboring ancient ideologies linger longer than we like. We must tolerate their company since beating old people is in bad form. Removing them from positions of power is not, and Bobby Jindal needs to make a public example of Bardwell … before the Dixiecrats find a way to pin this episode on the Republican Governor.

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