Mississippi still racist. In Other News? Water is still wet.

The fine folks of Mississippi's Republican Party, when polled (N=440) about politics and social issues expressed that 46% of them would prefer interracial marriage be illegal. Not shocking, but the implications are telling all the same...


http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/PPP_Release_MS_0407915.pdf

Q14 Do you think interracial marriage should be
legal or illegal?
Legal
40%
...............................................................
46%
Illegal ..............................................................
Not sure 14%

Well, it just confirms the idea that unsurprisingly entire pockets of the deep south have through sheer force of will have managed to avoid reality and modernity. It further underscores a much more important idea: that left to popular vote, the ability or right for interracial couples to marry whom the see fit would- if 46% of the sample had its way, be illegal. The collective rights of the American people should never be left up to the musings of a popular vote, as the old biases tend to be pervasive regardless of whether or not we naively expect others to do the "right thing". The "Will of the People"(tm) is not always right or fair. It was, after all, only 1967 when Loving v. the Supreme Court of Virginia decided that Interracial marriage ought to be decriminalized. There are more than one types of American culture, some of which exist in the present, some of which pine for the days past. These sort of intra-generational divides I have a feeling will grow more pronounced as the Baby Boom generation advances. Gay marriage, interracial marriage, the sudden and xenophobic fear of all things sharia...all growing pains social conservatives can't bring themselves get out of the past long enough to see clearly... and seem desperate to counteract at the cost of the liberties of others.

(And the always great Arcade Fire, for your reading and listening pleasure. )