by ARP columnist, Jason Sperber
A recent post on Rice Daddies, the group blog by Asian American dads that I coordinate, incited a lively debate among commenters about whether racially or culturally based Halloween costumes were well-meaning or racist, or worth getting upset about at all.
On the one hand, we could throw up our hands and say, “C’mon, it’s just Halloween! Dressing up is supposed to be fun, that’s all!” On the other, we could look at this as a teachable moment for a lesson in critical media literacy. After all, today’s Halloween is as commercialized a holiday as any, if not moreso—where our parents might remember childhoods of handmade costumes and homemade treats, ask most elementary school kids today to describe what happens on October 31st, and they’ll talk about store-bought, mass-produced costumes (many based on branded characters) and nationally-marketed, commercial brands of candy.
What, then, are the messages and meanings embedded in these costumes, and do our children really want to broadcast or endorse these messages through their costume choices? Halloween can become an opportunity to engage our children in critical analysis and questioning of where stereotypical images come from and what they mean.
In a 2004 column on stereotypes at Halloween, Tolerance.org’s parenting columnist Dana Williams offered these questions to guide a family’s costume choosing:
•Is the humor based on “making fun” of real people, real human traits or cultures? For example: Though intended to be funny, costumes depicting “crazy,” strait-jacketed individuals can be demeaning, dehumanizing and humiliating to those struggling with a mental illness and their families. Such costumes can reinforce stereotypes and fears about persons with mental illness.
•Is the “fear factor” based on real forms of violence or grotesque depictions of human traits? “This scary stud can empty out a full house just by walking through the door,” touted the tag line for Fright Catalog’s Vato Loco mask of 2002. A bandana clad, tattooed, brown-skinned vinyl creation, Latino activists said the mask made light of gang violence, which takes a serious toll on families and neighborhoods across the country. This costume also sent the message that all Latinos are violent.
•If the costume is meant to be historical, does it further misinformation or historical and cultural inaccuracies? The “Indian” get-up prevails each year as culture-turned-costume. But did you know few Native Americans wore buckskin and headbands and even fewer wore them together? Did you know “war paint” and feathers carry religious meaning and were never worn by Native American children?
•If the costume is meant to be beautiful, are these characteristics drawn from commercial references, such as movie characters? Too often, Halloween beautiful means white, blond princess masks. What statement does your Halloween costume make about what constitutes beauty — and about who is beautiful and who isn’t?
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Jason Sperber is a former stay-at-home-dad of a 2-year-old daughter (“The Pumpkin”) and the husband of a family physician (“la dra.”) living in California’s Central Valley. He is currently a writer/blogger/online community manager. A former high school social studies teacher, he has a background in ethnic studies and education for social justice. He writes the blog daddy in a strange land and coordinates Rice Daddies, the group blog by Asian American dads. He can be reached at daddyinastrangeland@mac.com.
I am shamed to say that when I was 8 or so, I did wear my mom’s old “Indian” costume, complete w/ headdress and moccasins.
*sigh*
In my defense, between the tan skin and black straight hair, I “passed” more than the usual kid in my city would have. That and I was the type of kid who wanted to be the Indian if a group of kids was playing Cowboys.
But the point is I know better now, and I’m encouraging my future kids (friends too – so many of us in my circle THRIVE on Halloween) to go for the less-stereotypical costumes. Most of them do so already, but it helps to have reminders.
My daughter is Chinese by heritage. Last year, one of the adults at her school dressed up like a “China Girl (her words),” complete with yellow face paint, eyes painted to look slanted and a coolie costume.
When I spoke with the administration about the inappropriateness of the costume, they missed the point. They made the adult apologize to me. I told them I didn’t want an apology, I wanted them to make sure their staff didn’t wear costumes that sent the wrong messages to the kids, including my daughter … like the message that her face and heritage is like a costume???
This year I’m struggling with a new one … two of my six-year-old’s friends are going to wear traditional Chinese clothes for their Halloween costume. What message does that send to her??
On a parenting board I participate on, there’s a mom who announced she’s going to dress up as a particular rapper for Halloween (she’s white), and so far I’m the only person – in 20 posts – to tell her that dressing up in blackface is wrong.
Amazing.
Didi, I know exactly what you mean – I was the only one on my local parenting board to tell another mom that her plan to dress her son as an “Indian brave” could be considered offensive (she asked). She wasn’t offended by my tactful reply (complete with a really brief history of the U.S., synopsis of common cultural stereotypes, you get the idea). But the other moms ganged up on me like I had been rejected from a seventh grade lunch table.
Their whiny responses ran the gamut from “I’m tired of P.C. world, what happend to things being fun?!” to “Are you yourself Native?” to “I’m sorry, but you are a little too bold for our board!” Unbelievable (but only somewhat…we live in an area with very little diversity).
The discussion lasted for two days before I remebered that I gave up struggling to change racist attitudes years ago. Some people will always be willfully ignorant. The best I could do before signing off was send them the link to this site.
If you use the guides as a yardstick, then…
If you dress up as a witch, what about the sensibilities of Wiccans. Does this ugly, horrid witch costume take into account the suffering of countless women accused of witchcraft?
What about the Frankenstein monster? Won’t that upset people who have suffered multiple surgeries and now are covered in scars and other deformations?
Wolfman? Upset people with excessive facial/body hair.
Mummy? Upset people who have relatives in hospitals who might be in full body casts.
Dress up as a really ugly person with googly eyes? Upset really ugly people with googly eyes.
Is dressing up as one of the Mongol horde okay now that enough time has passed since they existed?
What about dressing up as a pilgrim…will that offend anyone?
I think people need to get a grip.
To Steve– you have a right to be offensive. Just know that that is what you are doing. There are people who are so ignorant that they don’t even recognize their own superiority complex. Some people think they are flattering the people who feel stereotyped. If you don’t care how your actions affect other people, then by all means do what you want.
Oh, Steve …
It might be hard to understand this discussion if this particular subject doesn’t affect you personally, but you still don’t get a free pass to crack jokes. Anyone can take offense to just about anything, but that’s really not the point here.
Making light of a particular situation doesn’t change the reality of it.
How is dressing up as an Indian Chief offensive? Answer my question: how far back into history can I go to choose a costume that won’t offend anyone? Roman Centurion…that okay? How about a Christian about to be thrown to the lions (or grosser, one that already has been…complete with torn and gaping “wounds”)?
How about dressing up as an Aztec? That okay?
How far back into history does cultural clothing have to go before wearing it isn’t considered offensive?
Anyone who gets offended because some 5 year old girl wants to dress up as Pocahontas (sp?) because she likes the pretty clothes and colours is a moron who would do better to try to understand the intent behind such a choice then look for something against which to take offense.
Just because someone allows their child to wear an Indian costume does not make them someone who has a superiority complex. Smugly looking down upon such people most assuredly does.
I’m Irish…would I get offended if someone wore a drunken Irishman costume? Nope.
My friend is black…one Halloween party I went dressed as a cannibal (with black makeup and a bone through my nose), and he wore white makeup and went as an explorer who was soon to be my meal. See….funny.
*crickets*
My daughter is dressing up as a Princess this year. She’s black, so my wife and I discussed whether we could get her interested in perhaps dressing up in an “African Princess” costume instead of the typical Disney Snow White type thing. We scratched that idea because our daughter is mostly interested in the poofy dresses and the sparkly tiaras, and without that, a costume wouldn’t count as a “princess” to her. It’s OK though… she’s still a princess either way, and she’s just as black whether she wears Kente cloth or a ball gown — and she knows that!
It did make me wish we’d had more African princess books/videos/pictures to point to, though, so that we can show her that there are alternatives to the Disney princess model. Add that to the to-do list.
As for Steve: I think he’s asking an honest question: Where do you draw the line? For me, you just have to be more careful with and around kids. It’s one thing to dress a kid up in stereotyped garb: It’s tacky, and it reinforces messages of racism because kids don’t have the necessary ironic distance to view it critically. But it’s another thing entirely when an adult does it: It’s still tacky, but can be a form of camp, like your getup with your friend. You shouldn’t be surprised by hostile reactions from people who don’t get the joke, though.
Interesting, Dylan.
I didn’t let my one of my daughters dress up as an African Princess simply because I didn’t want her to grant sanction to traditional dress as “costume,” something to don in a moment of breaking free of the rules of acceptable, presentable dress.
We have lots of wraps and broad bands of cloth that we use here in the house, and that I have worn when I am out, so she thought to use this as an opportunity to display her garments. It didn’t seem to send the right message, though her intentions were to pay tribute.
So, yes, I understood, but ultimately, I pulled together a “belly-dancer-like” costume, which I was slightly apprehensive of (my design and sewing skills more speculative than anything else), worried that it felt more like East Indian Princess, or Gypsy. I didn’t want to offend, to teach her to do so in even an innocent manner. It can be difficult.
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For instance…the same friend I mentioned (the black guy)…wanted to dress up this halloween as a lawn jockey…holding a lantern! He’s about 6 feet tall and looks like a linebacker, so I think he might have had a problem finding a jockey costume that would fit. Now, had I done that…it might have been considered racist…or would it? Would I be making fun of black people, or lawn jockeys?
Instead, he went dressed as Santa Clause…with a Rastafarian twist (including a sack full o’ bongs…pretend ones, of course).
I went dressed as Mr. Slave from South Park. I walked around saying “Jethuth Critht” just like the character..I pissed off a gay couple. Go figure.
Steve, I’m curious as to why you felt the need to reference your black friend twice. Do you feel that because one person of color isn’t offended by these costumes, that definitively proves that the costumes are not racist?
No…it’s just that he and I, along with our spouses, usually attended halloween parties together. In fact, I have known him for years (since University…about 20 years). And since this is about halloween costumes, well…it would be tough to mention costumes without mentioning him.
To be honest, I can’t think of any other costume(s) he and I might have ever worn that might be considered “racist” except for the one I mentioned. We’ve gone as Ghostbusters, garbage, a six-pack, used tampons (red legs and feet, white top, and a string out the top of our heads), cans of soup, robots, women, hippies, members of Kiss…you name it. So, in the spirit of this conversation, I mentioned the one costume combination we wore that might be considered racist by the hand-wringing cringe crowd who decry all manner of stupidity for fear it will offend someone.
I just tried to point out that it’s the “intention” that should drive whether or not something is racist. If I thought that all black people (“…person of color…? People actually use that? Sounds racist to me. I mean, if “black” is a colour, then technically white is too…) were cannibals, and I wore a cannibal costume, then yeah, that’s racism.
Does that answer your question?
“…person of color…”? Really?
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Kim: a bellydancing outfit is also traditional dress (traditional for Middle Eastern dancers). For that matter, so is a ballgown (traditional for debutantes and European princesses at formal occasions).
I think we are missing the point if we prohibit our kids from wearing “traditional garb” at Halloween. The point of Halloween (for me at least) is that you have permission to be someone else for a day. Some people choose outlandish/fantasy personae (Dracula, mummies, Teletubbies), others choose personae that are closer to reality (cheerleader, race car driver).
In my opinion, it’s probably impossible to don a costume that doesn’t trade on a stereotype of some kind. The point of a costume is that you are wearing some recognizable signs of a particular type of person/creature/class. If you didn’t do that, you wouldn’t be recognizable as that type. Nobody wants to dress up as, say, a doctor in her casual clothes. If you dress up as a doctor you wear the white coat and the stethoscope, even though doctors don’t always dress that way. Same with cowboys (real cowboys might wear hiking boots now for all I know), princesses, Indians, or whatever.
As long as they are not done in a demeaning spirit I don’t see why we should be afraid of letting our kids put on the costume of their choice.
Steve: While I think your questions are honest and well-meant, asking whether people actually use the term “person of color” shows that you are remarkably out of touch with any discourse on race and racism that has happened in the last 25 years. You have some valid points but you are not going to get very far on a site like this by using one black friend as a shield against your own ignorance. You might want to listen to one or two other non-white folks on the subject.
Shield? I never used him as a shield. As I mentioned, I have my own opinion on what constitutes racism and what doesn’t. I only mentioned him because the costumes we wore one year might have been considered racist when taken out of context – the fact that he is black only added to the humour of the costume…as the fact that I am white did. And I only mentioned the costume he wanted to wear this year because I thought it was an interesting choice, given the discussion.
But “person of color”? I think I am definitely “out of touch with any discourse on race or racism” if that is what constitutes politically-correct terminology….I mean, isn’t “person of color” the same as saying “colored person”…which is the same as saying simply “colored”?
As for ignorance…the more I see of the “anti-racism” crowd, the more I see the other side of the same coin as a racist. Anti-racists still differentiate people based on colour (sorry, I keep resorting to the actual English spelling of the word) rather than on merit. If you treat someone differently because of the colour of their skin, whether that “treatment” is supposedly positive or negative, it is still racism. Giving preferential treatment based on how dark someone’s skin is, is as bad as doing so based on how light their skin is. A colour bar is a colour bar is a colour bar.
The belief that a, to use what appears to be the non-ignorant term, “person of color” needs to be handled more gently or given some sort of special treatment is as demeaning to them as treating them as poorly. (Just to clarify…I think “Affirmative Action” is one such demeaning program).
As for your suggestion that I listen to one or two other non-white folks (er…shouldn’t that be non-people-without-color folks?) on the subject…the friends I do have, who you would consider “non-white”, do not spend their days habitually discussing racial divides. Though, one did mention how uncomfortable he was when he worked in the US for several years…primarily due to the looks/stares he got when he walked around with his non-person-of-color wife.
But perhaps this is a matter of simple cultural differences…things seem to be a little less problematic here in Canada than in the US.
I like the idea , and almost hold to it, that dressing up as some recognizable “other” is where we are with Halloween, and does not demean or mock. Perhaps, though, the tendency to view the dressing up in traditional garb as “costume” is the problem: it suggests something more laughable, or cartoonish, than mere role playing.
The problem encountered by anyone who does not live in a community where they are in the majority, or have a large visible presence, is that when one does dress in traditional garb, others will actually make comments such as, “Hey, Halloween is over,” and chuckle (it does happen) or openly scoff.
If dressing as “other” at Halloween meant paying tribute, or trying on the style of that “other,” and conferring full dignity to its existence and place in the human family, I would carry forth your sentiments without reservation. The truth of our society is altogether different, though, and so I walk softly, and try not to tread .
When I go out in traditional garb, when my children darn our traditional garb, it will not be for costume or shock effect.
To Kim:
Hmmm….oddly, I had not considered an Indian chief costume as a “traditional garb”…though of course it is. I have seen/heard comments directed to someone wearing “traditional garb”, though this was due to the fact it was a Muslim woman, so that had more to do with 9/11 etc. than it being the style of clothing.
Steve…
“Indian Chief?” I’m sorry, I miss the reference. But to add my two cents, where traditional clothing is integral to the way a people live and/or worship, I would consider it off limits as “costume.”
Chief of a Nation? If I could wear something that would distinguish me as such, I wouldn’t.
But, now that we’re talking…if I feel out the spirit of what you are trying to defend in your talks about your Black friend (My Indian friend, Jimmy…do you remember this?), I would have to say you meant no offense, slight, disrespect. Even though you did say you found it hard to not think of him when the issue of costumes comes up, as though his face or personage was the first to pop up because of its…cartoonish qualities. I’m supposing you meant due to the long-standing nature of your shared Halloweens and dressing in costume during those times.
Dylan,
also did an aluminum foil-and box-with dryer exhaust tubing one year. Rids the whole point of this thread, moot, and engenders all sorts of how compliments on the parents’ inventiveness.
A nod to you.
To Kim: Of course I meant the fact that we often go to Halloween parties together. The ONLY reason I mentioned he was black was to explain the nature of our cannibal/explorer costume combination – both our skin colours being integral to the humour of it.
As for the possibility of him having a “cartoonish” quality…now that I think of it, he does! Not in his features, but in his comical laugh…I will have to let him know that one! I wish he would get back from his vacation…he would enjoy this conversation/topic!
Kim, my wife deserves all the credit for that robot costume! All I did was the lettering on the front. Good for you, for finding it!
The rest of you … we’re talking about this costume (from last year): http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/28/earthchildren_vs_spa.html
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