Recently, a popular parenting blog Rookie Moms sent out this tweet😕
Do you have a chubby, bald, dark-skinned baby? I have some Halloween ideas for you! DM if I don’t sound nuts. ? ?
Twitter, and especially black twitter, came back with a strong response that the blogger didn’t only sound nuts- she sounded racist. ?An apology was quickly issued.
Huffington Post recently featured a story about a blackface themed party held for someone’s 21st birthday party. Thus, we get to the issue of racist and culturally insensitive costumes during Halloween.
?It is because of incidents like these and costumes like ?Hey Amigo? and others that the CU-Boulder campus has launched the ?We’re a Culture, Not a Costume? campaign. The original campaign was started three years ago at Ohio State University by the student group S.T.A.R.S., whose mission is in part to facilitate discussion about diversity and all “isms”(sexism, classism, heterosexism, ethnocentrism, etc), with an emphasis on racial issues,”?highlights how various costumes are hurtful and downright racist.
?The campaign has received plenty of criticism the most common in comment sections is why can’t people take a joke. In a multimedia piece on The Root,?they addressed this common excuse for racist costumes.?Leslie Picca, associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton in Ohio, who has?studied racial joking specifically, told?The Root?that kidding around about racial and ethnic stereotypes is especially insidious because it shuts down future conversations about the real, unfunny issues that give life to the laughs. She says:
The thing is, a joke doesn’t work without a foundation of cultural resonance, or at least a nugget of perceived truth.?If somebody says, ‘Hey, I don’t like it.’ Then it’s put back on them, like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ It suggests that there’s something wrong with the person who’s offended.
Many think that donning these costumes is an ironic statement about race and culture. This issue is more a more complex tangled web of race, class, and privilege. ?While some may see this as a black/white issue it is not. ?A person of any race or ethnicity can certainly don harmful, bigoted, and culturally appropriated costuming. The end goal of these campaigns is that people of all races think of the motivations and impact of their costume choices. It’s not a question of can you dress in these costumes but should you because let’s face it there is nothing ironic about racism.
Edited/Published by: SB
