Here’s a new book full of beautiful black and white portraits of interracial couples! The foreward is written by one of my favorite mixed chicks, Heidi Durrow. The photos are stunning. Thank you, Robert Kalman, for this wonderful book that will no doubt help us break our subconscious instinct to assume that these people do not belong together. You can purchase your copy here.
Yet another disheartening story of hatred in the form of racism. Maybe instead of naivety it’s because of who and what I am that I find it shocking that so-called “racial purity” is an obsession for some. A crusade. A cause to kill and die for.
Staff
Charleston
http://www.wvmetronews.com/index.cfm?func=displayfullstory&storyid=32733
Meredith Harris is white. Her husband is black. She has white friends and black friends. She says the color of their skin has never really mattered to her, but she says it does to some… Harris, 22, has what some may call an unbelievable story about racism. But it is true, and it happened in Charleston, WV. The story ended with a man named Darrell Fierce pleading guilty to violating Harris’ civil rights. Fierce was never sentenced because he died after shooting himself on the day of his sentencing hearing.
It began in late June 2007 when Harris found a house to rent. Next door was Fierce and his partner, both older white men. After signing a lease with Fierce’s partner, it was move in day for Meredith. Her white friends were there to help.
“That was actually the first day I met Darrell. I was carryin’ stuff in and out of the house. He came up and walked over in the yard and introduced himself. He actually gave me a bottle of champagne with like a red ribbon and everything. (He) told me ‘welcome to the neighborhood’ (and) if there was anything I need to let him know… He was just really friendly to me the first day….he was very friendly. Ben had always been friendly. Darrel was friendly. So, I thought everything was going to be fine.”
But everything wasn’t fine. Two days after moving in Meredtih Harris brought a young mixed-race girl to the house along with who is now her father-in-law, a black man.
“My goddaughter…she’s mixed. And she was over there and as soon as they saw her the next chance they got they confronted me in the front yard. (They) called my goddaughter some very inappropriate things. (They) said that they weren’t having a day care for ‘mixed monkeys.’ (They) said they didn’t like my kind and that I was going to have to leave. (They) pretty much called me white trash. At that point, that was when they tried to evict me. ”
Harris says that after a wonderful initial reception things had changed suddenly.
“When they first said it I didn’t believe them. I was like ‘are you serious?’ But once it like clicked to me that they were being serious -that they were really that racist and this wasn’t like a joke- that’s when I called my dad. He came over and he confronted them. Once he got there they pretty much said the same thing to him. ‘We know why you don’t want her. She’s white trash. We know you’re probably ashamed of her. I’d be ashamed of her too.’ (They) just said things like that that were really inapproriate. At this point i didn’t want to live there anymore.”
Having been given an eviction notice by the men for what they called “incapability” Meredith began looking for a new place to live. Then came the night of July 15th, 2007. As she often did, Meredith went to bed late. Her wake up call on July 16th was scary.
“It was about five o’clock in the morning when I woke up and my dog woke me up. By the time she did, the smoke was so thick in my room I could hardly see,” Harris said. “I usually sleep with my door closed, but it was actually open that night. As soon as I woke up I knew it was him (Fierce) that did it.”
“He made like a little brush pile with trash and flammable stuff,” she remembered. “They started the fire right outside my bedroom and at the front and backdoor, I guess, to try and trap me in there.”
Harris would later find her and her boyfriend’s cars had slashed tires and sugar-filled gasoline tanks.
That was her last night in the house, but she kept her belongings there as she looked for a new place to live. She says within a week the house was empty and when she returned she says Fierce reminded her what he had said before that he was going to evict her.
“I walked inside the house and everything that I owned was gone. Everything from by shower curtain, to my toothbrush, to my hairdryer, everything was gone,” Harris said.
“After he said those things about me and my goddaughter I knew he was crazy, but I never thought my life would be in danger for staying there until I found another place,” Harris recently said in an exclusive interview with MetroNews.
Harris was waiting for Fierce to go to trial and she admits today she was surprised when he agreed to plead guilty to the charges. He did so earlier this year, although when the plea hearing began before a federal judge he made up a story about why he set the house on fire. Before the hearing was over, Harris says Fierce told the truth, but she could tell he wasn’t sorry.
“Even after the fact he felt no remorse,” Harris said. “He didn’t think there was anything wrong with what he did.”
The 69-year-old Fierce was scheduled to be sentenced in late July, but he didn’t show up for his hearing. Federal marshals soon discovered he had shot himself in the stomach in a Kanawha City motel room. Fierce was hospitalized for several days, before passing away.
“I didn’t want him to die. I would have much rather seen him go to jail to be honest,” Harris said. “I guess everybody else thought I would feel safer. I just felt bad and it made me feel worse.”
I guess it’s not really a big deal seeing as he’s let a black person use his bathroom and all. Of course I do not mean that at all and I am appalled by this. Especially because his reason is to prevent the creation of miserable people like me. Good God! I think when this man sees and interracial couple he sees (in his mind) something like this:
rather than this:
By MARY FOSTER, AP
HAMMOND, La. (Oct. 15) – A white Louisiana justice of the peace said he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple out of concern for any children the couple might have.
Keith Bardwell, justice of the peace in Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long.
“I’m not a racist. I just don’t believe in mixing the races that way,” Bardwell told the Associated Press on Thursday. “I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else.”
Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them, he said.
Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.
“There is a problem with both groups accepting a child from such a marriage,” Bardwell said. “I think those children suffer and I won’t help put them through it.”
If he did an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.
“I try to treat everyone equally,” he said.
Bardwell estimates that he has refused to marry about four couples during his career, all in the past 2 1/2 years.
Beth Humphrey, 30, and 32-year-old Terence McKay, both of Hammond, say they will consult the U.S. Justice Department about filing a discrimination complaint.
Humphrey, an account manager for a marketing firm, said she and McKay, a welder, just returned to Louisiana. She is white and he is black. She plans to enroll in the University of New Orleans to pursue a masters degree in minority politics.
“That was one thing that made this so unbelievable,” she said. “It’s not something you expect in this day and age.”
…”It is really astonishing and disappointing to see this come up in 2009,” said American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana attorney Katie Schwartzmann. She said the Supreme Court ruled in 1967 “that the government cannot tell people who they can and cannot marry.”
The ACLU sent a letter to the Louisiana Judiciary Committee, which oversees the state justices of the peace, asking them to investigate Bardwell and recommending “the most severe sanctions available, because such blatant bigotry poses a substantial threat of serious harm to the administration of justice.”
“He knew he was breaking the law, but continued to do it,” Schwartzmann said.
…”I’ve been a justice of the peace for 34 years and I don’t think I’ve mistreated anybody,” Bardwell said. “I’ve made some mistakes, but you have too. I didn’t tell this couple they couldn’t get married. I just told them I wouldn’t do it.”
If these two are not in an interracial relationship…..
Then neither are these couples…
Though this (hopefully) isn’t something that happens every day in America, the fact that it has happened in 2009 is so very disheartening. This is why we keep talking about these issues. Many of us have risen above the confines of race, many of us have not. Many reside somewhere in between. All I know for sure is that this country has still got a long way to go in healing from our sordid racial history. And I think it would help if they would just admit that this was a hate crime. I just don’t understand the benefit of pretending that this was just some random act of violence. The truth will set us free, right?
by Dawn Teo
PHOENIX, AZ — Phoenix police say the gunning down of an interracial couple by a stranger in a local Phoenix park is being investigated as a possible hate crime. A 39-year-old white female was shot to death after being confronted with a racist question about being with her black boyfriend, Jeffrey Wellmaker.
The couple was out for a walk in La Palma Park in Phoenix early Saturday morning when a heavily tattooed man with a shaved head approached them and asked Wellmaker, “What are you doing with that white woman?”
The couple tried to ignore the question and immediately walked away. The gunman followed on foot for a short distance, then got into the passenger seat of a nearby car. The car followed the couple for approximately half a mile before the gunman fired two shots from the passenger window, and the car sped away.
Both the 39-year-old woman and 48-year-old Wellmaker were hit. The woman, who has not yet been identified by police, was transported to the hospital where she died later Saturday. Wellmaker did not sustain serious physical injury.
Phoenix police officer James Holmes says he cannot say for certain that the shooting was a hate crime, “but it does lead us in that direction just because of the fact that the suspect made a comment to the race of both victims,” explaining, “He’s bald. He’s got tattoos. He’s making a comment about a white woman with a black man. One could assume that it might be a hate crime.”
The suspect has not been identified and is described as a white male, about 5’6″, heavily tattooed. The suspect fled the scene in a white four-door car with tinted windows.
Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dawn-teo/mixed-race-couple-confron_b_308842.html
ONE TOWN. TWO PROMS.
UNTIL NOW.
1954
The U.S. Supreme Court orders the integration of all segregated schools in America, including all their events.
1970
The town of Charleston, Mississippi, finally allows black students into their one high school. White parents refuse to integrate the school Graduation Dance, starting a tradition of separate, parent-organized White Proms and Black Proms.
2008
Change happens.
Oh. My. Goodness. Guys did you see this!? Last night was the premiere of the HBO documentary Prom Night in Mississippi. It was just so darn good. One of my favorite documentaries ever! In case you haven’t heard, the town of Charleston, MS had been holding two separate, segregated proms since the schools integrated in 1970. Morgan Freeman offered to pay for the prom in 2007 if they would just hold one for all of the students. His offer was declined. He tried again in 2008 and his offer was accepted. The film exposes the climate of race relations in Mississippi and makes clear that this up and coming generation must make a conscious choice to break the cycle of division.
I have long been a fan of Morgan Freeman. Probably since the first time I saw the movie Glory. Then he sealed the deal with Robin Hood and Shawshank. Anyway, I was inspired by the way he spoke to the students and handled the adults on the school board, but the most poignant Morgan moment for me was when he said “If I go around hating you because you have blond hair and blue eyes, I’m doomed. You’re fine, but I’m doomed.” I believe that with all my heart. I’m always saying that this racism thing is a double edged sword. On the surface it may seem like it’s just those being discriminated against who are being hurt by it, but I’ve always felt that most of the damage is done to the discriminator. I just loved hearing him say that.
There is a section of the film where the students are so openly talking about the ways they’ve been taught to be racist and pondering why this could be. Some of the white kids come to the conclusion that it must be that their people don’t want mixed kids in their family. That’s why the adults are so afraid of an integrated prom. We’re told that one parent said, “I don’t want no n****r grinding up on my daughter. I won’t have no mixed kids in this family.” The fact that people think this way is certainly not news to me. It’s my history. I know it well. And yet, I was so uncomfortable hearing it spoken aloud. Like kinda squirmy.
There is one interracial couple in the film. Heck, there is probably one interracial couple in the whole town, and they happen to be students at the school. They do not hold hands in public. They have never been on a date because her father, who insists that he is not racist, will not allow it. He hasn’t “whooped her or nothin”, but he grounded her and took her phone away. To his dismay she overcame it all and is still dating Jeremy. They got the most applause during the senior walk at the prom.
There are so many things I want to relay, but really I think you should just see the film. Please.
omg
Great movie! I remember being told that I would like it, that I should see it, that someone had thought of me when they saw it. Well, everything I’d heard was true. I was really floored by the film. It came out in 2005. I had been thinking about biracial for a little while by the time I saw it at home on dvd, but no one had ever mentioned to me that there were biracial people in it. White dad/black mom biracial even! And divorce. It’s like Miranda July made the movie for me! Best of all, the movie wasn’t “about” race. It wasn’t about tragic mulattos whose parents were divorced, or about racial tensions, or interracial relationships. It was about people going through life. The wikipedia plot description doesn’t even mention race:
-Plot: The film begins by introducing Richard (John Hawkes), a shoe salesman and recently separated father of two. After being thrown out by his wife Pam (JoNell Kennedy), he gets an apartment of his own to share with his children, Peter (Miles Thompson) and Robby (Brandon Ratcliff). He meets Christine (Miranda July), a senior-cab driver and amateur video artist, while she takes her client to shop for shoes, and the two develop a fledgling romantic relationship.-
If you have seen the film you’ll recognize this. I think it represents one of the most hilarious, unforgettable film moments ever. I found this photo on someone’s blog and they wrote that they really loved the shirt, but wouldn’t have the nerve to wear it.
Well, I have been wearing this for about a year and a half now…
I wish mine said “forever”. I have made many a youtube video in this tank. I’m always tempted to feature it since the movie deals with biracial, but I don’t want to be showing my chest off, nor can i imagine actually saying “poop back and forth” into the camera.
From someone’s (http://secretsthatsell.tumblr.com/post/97524473/via-farm1-static-flickr-com-im-doing-my-media) media (ethics?) class:
This Benetton ad was offensive to many readers. Yet its message —that race should not matter—certainly is not offensive. Why do you think the ad was so controversial and, eventually, pulled from distribution? Would you have pulled it?
Uh, no, I would not have. And it was controversial because we are living within the confines of antiquated thinking. Average people thinking average old thoughts questioning nothing criticizing everything and keeping things the same.
mulatto diaries 