Do biracial children have more social advantages?

Christian Science Monitor

ATLANTA — Louisiana justice of the peace Keith Bardwell refused to marry a white woman and a black man reportedly because he believed that children of an interracial marriage would suffer socially.

That view was once common in the United States and might have had some basis decades ago when such marriages were taboo and multiracial families were sometimes ostracized. But today, not only are mixed-race children widely accepted, but some research suggests they might even have some social advantages.

Researchers are finding that multiracial children can sometimes be better socially adjusted than single-race offspring. And with the high-profile success of multiracial progeny such as Tiger Woods, Halle Berry and President Barack Obama (who at his first press conference as president described himself as a “mutt”), stereotypes about the split world of the “tragic mulatto” have long fallen by the wayside.

The American Civil Liberties Union is now threatening a lawsuit if Bardwell, veteran justice of the peace at Tangipahoa Parish, doesn’t step down. The group calls Bardwell’s refusal to issue a marriage licence to Beth Humphrey (who is white) and Terence McKay (who is black) both “tragic and illegal.”

“I’m not a racist,” Bardwell told a local newspaper. “I do ceremonies for black couples right here in my house. My main concern is for the children.”

Refusing to issue marriage licenses for reasons of race has been illegal in the U.S. since the Supreme Court in 1967 struck down anti-miscegenation laws in 16 states, mostly in the South.

Research on mixed-race children once focused on the social and psychological problems that can arise from not feeling like a full member of any racial group. That notion permeated early 20th-century American literature through the figure of the “tragic mulatto,” who did not fit in with either the black or white world.

As recently as 1968, psychologist J.D. Teicher wrote, “Although the burden of the Negro child is recognized as a heavy one, that of the Negro-White child is seen to be even heavier.”

The idea that mixed-race children were biologically inferior to white or black children was also widespread in the South and often formed the basis of anti-miscegenation laws during Jim Crow years. (Researchers have found that not only is that not true, but that mixed-race offspring tend to be overall more physically attractive than their peers.)

But loosening of marriage laws and more-accepting social mores have transformed perceptions of multiracial families. For one thing, there are now 7 million mixed-race children in the U.S., up from 500,000 in the 1970s.

A 2008 study of 182 mixed-race high school children in California found that these children didn’t focus on exclusionary features such as skin color or hair texture when thinking about themselves, but instead, they appeared to feel that their heritage made them “unique.”

The reality for many mixed-race children probably lies somewhere between liberating and restrictive. On a Yale University blog this year, biracial student Phoebe Hinton wrote: “I am lucky enough to have an excuse flowing in my veins to do whatever … I want: there are some things white people do and … I’ll do them. There are some things black people do, and … I’ll do them.

“Pretty much the only thing people won’t accept me doing,” she adds, “is continuing to identify as neither black nor white, but an amalgam of the two.”

Whether biracial children in rural Louisiana experience the same confidence in their identity — in a region where race arguably still hangs heavier than other parts of the country — is an open question.

Even if they don’t, Bardwell, the justice of the peace, will be hard-pressed to convince anybody — including potentially the U.S. Justice Department — that that’s any of his business.