The Atlantic - Latest Comments in Quote Of The Year

Re: Quote Of The Year

Kevin — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:07:04 -0000

I'm a 46 year old white guy who lives in Louisiana. The handful of times in my life that I have either been told something like that by another white person, or heard a white person make a statement like that, they ALWAYS preface it with the statement, "I'm not a racist, but..." One old dude when I was waiting tables told me that he wasn't a racist, but he was a segregationist.

It's as if they're JUST aware enough of how unacceptable their views are that they realize the necessity of the disclaimer, but still clueless enough to share their dumbass opinions with the rest of us.

It also seems as if they think that putting the disclaimer in magically makes it true. "Oh, so you think we should bring back lynching, but you're NOT a racist? Well, gosh, if you're not a racist, I guess that's okay, then."

As the father of two wonderful bi-racial children, this shit makes my blood boil. It also reminds me of the school principal a few years back who told a school assembly that bi-racial children were a mistake. According to both of these assholes, and anyone who thinks like them, my children should never have been born.

Oh, and by the way, I logged onto a site this morning that had a poll in a sidebar asking if Bardwell should be fired from his job for refusing to marry an inter-racial couple, and an unbelievable 36% of the voters said no, he shouldn't. It's not scientific, obviously, but it's still depressing as hell.

Re: Quote Of The Year

gnc — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:44:40 -0000

I see this sentiment in comments frequently: "racism is a very nasty thing". It's part of that belief that you're only a racist if you belong to the Ku Klux Klan, or have lynched a black person, or expressed the desire to do so. These actions are so extreme that, according to this sentiment, very few people would qualify as "racist" or having "racist" views.

Why do we need to worry about preserving the "power" of the word "racism"? It's a description of certain behavior or beliefs. If the shoe fits, wear it. Some people used to be proud to be called racists. Lately, not so much. There's more social opprobrium attached to expressing racist views these days, but that hasn't stopped that throw-back Rush Limbaugh from race-baiting.

"Racism" is simply the belief that there are such things as separate human 'races', instead of one human race. The fact that this JP used a supposedly "anti-racist" excuse for his action does not make him an 'anti-racist'. It was mighty white of him to let black folks use his bathroom, don't you think? If you treat someone a certain way, good or bad, simply because of that person's 'race', regardless of his or her individual character or actions, then you are a racist. You've heard the phrase: 'judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin'?

There probably are more precise technical terms to describe certain behavior or beliefs such as bigotry, prejudice, stereotyping, etc. But for the most part, "racism" is a perfectly appropriate description for behavior such as refusing to issue a marriage license to a couple because you don't believe in 'mixing the races.' It doesn't matter whether you think one 'race' is superior or inferior to another 'race'. The mere fact that you believe that there are such things as separate 'races' qualifies you as a 'racist'. Also, the fact that 'race' is a social construct, a social fiction, does not mean that racism is not real.

Re: Quote Of The Year

bread & roses — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:11:58 -0000

I'll stop using the word racist when I stop seeing things to call out as racist. Racism is currently overused. Not the word, the attitude. When it stops being used so much, the rate of use of the word will go down.

It's hard for me to imagine what racism is, if refusing to marry an interracial couple isn't it.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Doc Merlin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 18:38:35 -0000

Yes the excuse he used was anti-racism, but that isn't the problem any more than racism was. It was just the excuse he used. Paternalism and the attitude of "I know better than you, what is good for you, so I will make you do what I want" that is the problem. It doesn't really matter what the excuse that is used. It boils down to respecting people enough to let them make their own decision. This man obviously didn't respect their opinion and allow them to take their own path.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:22:00 -0000

Understanding isn't the same thing as accepting.

Re: Quote Of The Year

PeteL — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:17:37 -0000

Flnse makes an outstanding point above, at 2:16 PM. Outstanding. Too often, especially among whites, the issue of prejudice against blacks is seen through the prism of white guilt, sort of like "we...the powerful white overlords...should have been nicer to the black people".

To the extent that we whites think about our guilt re: mistreatment of blacks, you often note an attitude sort of like slavery was bad, but at least we had Lincoln, who transitioned to a world of better treatment of blacks. Then again, America is the land of the free, meaning the land of the enfranchised, and in that respect the Jim Crow South sure wasn't a hell of a lot better than the pre-Civil War South.

So Flnse is right - the law says blacks and whites can marry. The great American culture of individual rights says blacks and whites can marry. If this judge disagrees, he must be fired, stat. Period. Then he can go to Russia or some other freedom-hating, totalitarian state to see if his "views imposed from above" more closely match theirs.

Beyond that, in America it doesn't matter that much why you hold your stupid views. Until your stupid views start interfering with others' freedoms, at which point it still doesn't matter why you hold said views, but it matters completely that you allow them to interfere with others' freedoms.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Bruins2Lakers — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:18:13 -0000

Ri-i-i-ight...anti-racism...now that's a novel reason to deny one their Consitutional rights...Sounds like the old pro-Jim Crow advocates arguing that blacks didn't want to de-segregate-it was those outside agitators, those commie-pinko-Jews and Catholics...

Re: Quote Of The Year

eric k — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:30:49 -0000

Ok, I apologize, I re-read your quote and realize you were likely replying to the first paragraph. I was reading your quote as a response to his 2nd paragraph, ie the Glen Beck view.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Doc Merlin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:47:36 -0000

I'd like to add to my statements that, we need to be very careful about using the word racism. When we over use it, it loses its power. If we call every person who is against Obama a racist or cast aspersions on their motives for example, then we weaken the word. Racism is a very nasty thing, and I don't want to see the horror of it become weakened by either overuse or by people using it where its not racism but something else that is also bad.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Juaquin Murrieta — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:46:21 -0000

Very sensible Flnse, and exactly on point. No one is trying to control this guy's personal opinions. I certainly don't want to wade into this particular gutter to figure out whether this character is a "racist" or not.

He had a job. He refused to do his job. Fire him out of there, like any other employee who refuses to do his job, and move on. He's already had too much attention.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Doc Merlin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:44:38 -0000

Actually if you look at what the guy says, he actually uses anti-racism as a justification for not granting a license. Its strange, but his argument is that kids from mixed family have people both black and white against them (racism in other words) and he doesn't want to put kids through that.

I don't see how you can argue its racism. Its illegal, its strange, and its un-american, but racist? I'd say no.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Jennifer D. — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:08:16 -0000

You are not alone.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Jennifer D. — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:46:56 -0000

"Good parenting in Colorado" - haha!

Re: Quote Of The Year

Bruins2Lakers — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:23:02 -0000

I may be alone in my anoyance, but--I'm tired, tired tired of the dumbest members of caucasion America getting their 15 minutes on the Retarded Guiding Light of our already dumb and dumber-cluttered airwaves: Jon and Kate, Balloon parents, Palin, Limbaugh and Beck, Birthers, Michelle Obama's 'Get Whitey' dissertation-rumor-mongers,,et al. Give me a break. No excuses for Judge Dumb-as-a-Turkey-in-the-Rain's defense of not issuing a marriage license to an interracial couple. There was a Civil Rights Law signed in 1965; surely this codger was slugging down brewskis with the card-carrying klan/sherriff deputies back then. He knows the law and his job is to correctly interpret and uphold it, not give his jiveass opinions on his myopic POV about how HE thinks mixed-race children live. Maybe Judgie-Wudgie (reference Curly) should take a drive to New Orleans and gain some perspective--or is he too firmly entrenched in the mire of his bias?

Re: Quote Of The Year

Juaquin Murrieta — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:42:46 -0000

"HE believes he's being helpful." Probably. We have people in the mental ward over there who believe that they are boiled eggs. In neither case are these persons correct.

The law is not called upon, thank God, nor is it qualified, to determine whether or not someone is "evil." (Or a "racist" (whatever that means) for that matter.) All the law can do is throw this guy out of office for being unwilling to perform the duties of his job.

Re: Quote Of The Year

sv — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:00:51 -0000

Damn right. Government really really needs to learn its God-damned place already. I'm not hopeful on that front.

Re: Quote Of The Year

FInse — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:36:51 -0000

It is EXACTLY THE SAME THING...And it is JUST AS SILLY!!!!

Re: Quote Of The Year

FInse — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:16:49 -0000

This person should not be allowed to keep his position as a Justice. Not because he is racist...That's his own ignorant problem..but because he is NOT DOING HIS JOB BECAUSE HE IS RACIST!!!! People are entitled to feel the way they want to... no matter how ignorant or silly it may be..but when those feelings affects others...ESPECIALLY as a public servant, that's when their "FEELINGS" should be addressed. In this particular situation... his emplyment address needs to change. He can feel however he wants...just not @ that job.

I am a Black man who is in a interracial relationship and we are expecting a baby girl. I am NOT outraged with his personal feelings. I was born and raised in The United States. I know all too well what a racist is...and he is definitely one. However, that is also irrelevant here....He could be the Grand Wizard of The Local CHapter of the Klu Klux Klan for all I care as long as he did his JOB.

Re: Quote Of The Year

sporcupine — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:24:45 -0000

I'm having the same reaction--which isn't my usual reaction.

I fear it's because on this issue, the racism gets deep inside MY family. My husband's aunt just celebrated 50 years with a guy from India she met in Edinborough, and my mother's brother adopted four of those kids the judge says no one would want--and I sat down last night and counted up 23 people who wouldn't be at our respective reunions if the judge got his way.

What's worrying me is that when it gets inside MY house, I just call it evil. I just want to get a steamroller and smash it to bits. All the talk I do about understanding just stopped dead when I saw that statement.

Which surely says something deep about the shallowness of the rest of my engagement.

Re: Quote Of The Year

margarita — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 11:41:08 -0000

I honestly don't think you'd find a lot of people with this specific, old-school segregation attitude in California, at least as this guy expressed it. Not because there aren't a lot of racists, but because inter-racial and multi-ethnic families are so commonplace that the notion of a biracial child somehow being in a social no-man's-land just wouldn't compute. Not that his real concern is genuinely "for the children," but it's telling what rationalization has purchase in his mind, not to mention that this guy is in a position of authority and has been doing this openly for years. I highly doubt you would see that in California.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Kylopod — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:50:01 -0000

It's easy to love someone when their racist rants are confined mostly to the Thanksgiving table, but what if they're given a public forum for expressing or even acting on their views? Then it becomes a bit harder to say they're wonderful people in spite of their bigotry. Granted, there's a spectrum of these things, and refusing to grant a marriage license is not in the same category as sending someone to a death camp. But the point is that a lot of the regular, ordinary people we meet have the potential to become reprehensible or even evil if given the opportunity, as painful as that judgment may be to people we love.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Mr. Shrimp — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:44:59 -0000

What I find even more disheartening than this particular guy is the fact that no one has stopped him yet, particularly his employers. WTF are they thinking, that this is OK? It's expressly illegal, because it is 100% racist. It sounds like he has been casually doing this great service to the unborn mixed race children of America for awhile now, and it never made the news, until now. No one spoke up. I guess that means that previous interracial couples just went elsewhere. I don't blame them - it would be easier, and more conducive with getting on with your life, to just go elsewhere than fight it. So just to be clear, my beef is with the people he works with and for.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Joshua Lyle — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:36:24 -0000

It's like saying the real problem with the Holocaust wasn't antisemitism, it was the wanton disregard for life. Yeah, I guess, and?

And, so, we should deal with mass-murder as a crime, not genocide per se. Killing, say, 60 million kulaks because they're kulaks is worse than killing 6 million Jews because they're Jews by 10-fold, regardless of the fact that the later is a gens and the other is a "only" a class. However, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide disagrees (although its first draft did not), since the USSR (among others) would not accept mass political killings as the same level of crime as genocide, being as they were responsible for so many of them, and so the ICC only prosecutes acts with the intent to destroy a "national, ethnical, racial or religious group" (even though a religious group that is not also nation, ethnic group or racial group is clearly not a gens and therefore destroying it clearly isn't genocide in the strict sense any more so than is politicide).

So, yeah, shades of judgment like that are a big deal, I'd say, given that the twentieth century produced many more engineered megadeaths that don't officially count as genocide than those that do.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Josh Jasper — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:19:51 -0000

"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

That sounds so familiar. Where have I heard that before?

Oh yeah,

For example, legitimizing same sex marriage would make it more difficult for those states that currently prohibit same-sex couples from adopting children to do so, even though studies show these children suffer much higher abuse rates and other problems than children in more traditional situations.

- Defendmarriage.org.

I'm quite familiar with that line of reasoning too. Those bigots don't like getting called bigots either, because they're crusading to protect children. Not hurt queer people. And just like how this judge doesn't mind black people marrying other black people, same sex couples are told they can marry, they just have to marry someone of the opposite sex.

Yes, this is exactly the same thing.

Re: Quote Of The Year

Ulysses (not yet home) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 10:15:35 -0000

Sorry. Racism and racists are evil. Don't excuse it. Don't "understand their upbringing". Ignorant and stupid? Yes, evil often is. Don't PRETEND that the poisonous concept doesn't harm both the object of racism AND the RACIST. The non reasoned doing of harm is a fairly good definition of evil. Their acts harm explicitly. Their thoughts harm implicitly. A lynching is simply the far end of the continuum of thought that has refusal to hire (or marry) closer to the other end. Every racist act which harms materially, comes about as a result of racist thought, which is maintained and supported by being expressed as as part of a racist consensus. It's like saying you while you'd like your cancer to be gone, you realize it's been in your lungs for a while and you understand it doesn't mean to kill you...

Understanding, or accepting that non cross burning level of racism is what allows managers to devalue the contributions of the minority employee, and justifies giving the raise or promotion to the white guy. It is what allows the police to respond indifferently to crime in the minority community. It is what allows school boards to resource schools in black communities at lower levels. Those acts, and the many thousands at that level, repeated to infinity, is what creates the pathology that racists like to point to as the justiification for racism. It is theft. And more insidiously, it is theft at a virtual institutional level, where the harm done is distributed across a society.

Just as the Holocaust was the end of the antisemitism continuum, no one seeks to excuse it by saying the Nazis were just ignorant, or you have to understand, or the Berlin is another country. Racism in our society is that same machine, just dialed back from the reign of terror standard it used to employ. Evil? Evil is as evil does....