La. interracial marriage: Is life tougher for biracial kids?

The idea that mixed-race children were biologically inferior to white or black kids 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.)

Changing views

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 kids in the US, up from 500,000 in the 1970s.

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

The kids are able to "place one foot in the majority and one in the minority group, and in this way might be buffered against the negative consequences of feeling tokenized," the study authors wrote in the Journal of Social Issues. The students surveyed included those with mixed Asian, Hispanic heritage.

Other studies suggest that while mixed-race kids may no longer feel the burden of discrimination, they still face unique challenges. A 2008 study led by Harvard researchers found that mixed-race adolescents tend to engage in risky behavior outside of school at higher rates than average and also fare "somewhat worse on measures of psychological wellbeing."

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 US Justice Department – that that's any of his business.

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