In 2019, The Good Five Cent Cigar published an article about complaints made following a sorority’s lack of sensitivity around Halloween costumes, ranging from white girls dressed up as Black male rappers to another dressed up as a homeless person.
We don’t want to have to publish another one of these articles.
This Sunday is Halloween, and I truly hope everyone has a great time dressing up, hanging out with friends and doing whatever their heart desires. As long as what your heart desires doesn’t involve taking someone’s culture or hardships and making it into a “cute” costume for a night.
If you’re not Indigenous and thinking about going as Pocahontas or wearing a Native American headdress, don’t.
If you’re white and want to dress up as a person of color and plan on reaching for some darker makeup or hitting up the tanning booth, don’t.
If you think writing on cardboard and wearing old clothes to look like a homeless person makes for a nice and easy option, don’t.
The list could go on and on, but it’s 2021, and I would hope you all know by now what costumes are insensitive and just downright racist. Still, I’m writing this article because if the 2019 incidents taught me anything, it’s that people could use some reminding. So, here’s your reminder. You have another three days to put together your costumes, so if you’re starting to question the nature of yours, it’s time for you to visit your local Party City or do some online shopping for a new one.
“But what about cultural appreciation?” you might ask. Well, there are many ways to do this. If you want to dress up as your favorite fictional character who happens to be of a different race or culture than you, there’s no need to alter the way you look physically. If your costume is good enough, people should be able to recognize who you are without you trying to change your skin tone in some way. Trust me, it’s better to be known as the person whose costume made no sense than the person who decided to adorn brownface, blackface or yellowface this Halloween. Again, if you’re nervous people might take it the wrong way, you’re probably airing more on the side of appropriation than appreciation.
In 2011, students at Ohio University launched a poster campaign titled, “We’re a culture, not a campaign.” These posters featured different people holding up pictures of costumes that were insensitive to their cultures. One image featured a young Arab boy holding up a picture of a white man wearing what is meant to be a shemagh and has fake dynamite strapped to his chest. “This is not who I am, and this is not okay,” the text on the poster said. Another featured an Asian man next to a white man dressed nerdily with glasses on, but the lenses had images of “Asian eyes” taped on them. “You wear the costume for one night, I wear the stigma for life,” was the text in this 2012 campaign.
This campaign perfectly encapsulates the problem with cultural appropriation in general, but specifically with Halloween costumes. Halloween comes once a year, and everyone should enjoy it, but if your enjoyment involves playing into harmful cultural stereotypes or racist dress, then you’ve crossed a serious line. The positive here is that if you do think you can get away with this for one night, it’ll probably follow you for the rest of your life. We often hear that once it’s on the internet, it’s there forever. Think twice before you make an Instagram post or add to your Snapchat story. Think twice before entering a space with other people because pictures will be taken, and once those pictures get out, action will be taken as well. There was never a place for these costumes, and there’s certainly no place for them in 2021.
You don’t want to pick up the next issue of The Good Five Cent Cigar and see an article was written about you and your culturally insensitive costume.
Happy Halloween; please do the right thing this Sunday.