Halloween is a time for silly costumes, and some use it as an excuse to drag out every racial and cultural stereotype they can think of for a silly costume. That's not cool. Students Teaching Against Racism (STARS) is an organization at Ohio University that put out a series of posters to "educate and create dialog" and to ask people to think before they select an insensitive Halloween costume. See the rest of the posters at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Link -via I Am Bored
Halloween is a time for silly costumes, and some use it as an excuse to drag out every racial and cultural stereotype they can think of for a silly costume. That's not cool. Students Teaching Against Racism (STARS) is an organization at Ohio University that put out a series of posters to "educate and create dialog" and to ask people to think before they select an insensitive Halloween costume. See the rest of the posters at Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Link -via I Am Bored
(But seriously, that's an actual costume? Ugh.)
That pouty little wimp does not represent everyone's opinion. Please stop being offended on behalf of others. Let us choose our own battles.
1. They only have photos of white people mocking the other cultures. That's just a common sense fail.
2. Their message, to me, appears to be "stick to your own kind. Unless.." There are exceptions to be made. If the character is fictional, if you do your research, if you buy traditional outfits from a native, if you blah blah blah. As if the police will get you?
And 3. The paradox.
Pocahontas- culturally incorrect as a Disney princess so it can be easily offensive if not done correctly.
Done correctly with research, Pocahontas moved to England, married a white man, essentially lost her culture, and one of the only notable photos of her is her dresses as a white woman. So being correct with your costuming (and it is beautiful costume) you are basically dressing up as Native American woman pretending to be white.
I feel this movement is just for people to gather and shake their heads at the drunk idiots at parties and feel righteous over the ignorant.
It was a notable news website I was looking at the other day (I can't remember as I look at many) which suggested Ghadfi being a hot new costume this year. (NOTE: This was before his death). That would be a sickening sight. Along with all those who want to dress up like "Tot Mom" Casey Anthony, or Bin Laden.
I guess there really are no "safe" costumes anymore if you're looking not to offend anyone. I don't care if someone wants to dress up in a stereotypical manner of my culture. It's their life and we live in "the land of the free" so, what is there for me to do that would effectively end this? Nothing. And you know what? I'm okay with it.
Let that sink in for a minute.
The girl dressed as Lil Wayne (in case you didn't get it) is not saying all blacks are gangsters. The guy dressed as a terrorist is not saying that all middle easterners are suicide bombers. And the geisha? It's a f-ing geisha...what more needs to be said.
These aren't political statements, it's just a freaking costume...for FUN...and sometimes LAUGHS...but not from squares who just want the next thing to whine about.
What's next? The only thing we can dress as is an M&M because that's the only thing that isn't going to offend everyone and make a generation of coddled babies butthurt?
it's not hard to avoid dressing up in one of these despicable "costumes". i can count on 1 hand the number of offensive costumes i've seen in my life, so if you're here defending these morons, take more than 5 seconds to come up with something else. it's pretty easy!
This planet is becoming a very boring place.
Isn't that a Juan Valdez costume? Valdez is a iconic character and brand used by the Colombians to sell their coffee. As such I don't mind someone poking a little fun at it.
Ditto Cardozo on Speedy Gonzales. The whole point of those cartoons was to destroy the stupid, lazy Mexican stereotype. In every cartoon Speedy runs circles around the gringo physically and mentally. Yet somehow they're all racist now.
When you step on someone's foot and they say "ouch", you get off their foot and apologize, not defend your right to step on people, tell them they're too sensitive, lay fault on them because they dare to have feet, and tell them that if they didn't complain about it, their toes wouldn't be broken.
Don't you find it a little hypocritical of yourself when you post jokes about dumb blondes and "Bubba" on your site? If you are offended by this, why aren't you as equally offended by those?
Like Dolly Parton said, "I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde."
Run away, women, run away!
Last year we had so many trick or treaters who showed up in shop bought star wars or fairy princess costumes or whatever. Guys put an effort into it and we'll give you candy. Don't put in an and you'll get the sourest sours I can find.
move along...
In many countries they have outlawed discrimination on the grounds of race, sex or religion, and also incitement to hatred on those grounds. This means that all bigots have left to them is either minor stuff (like dressing up in stupid costumes) or picking on other social groups. Hey it's OK to pick on the Irish because they're not a race! Err, no it isn't. Just because it's not illegal doesn't make it right or even OK. It's just as wrong on picking on people of another race.
However anybody who finds this sort of stereotyping amusing is probably of limitted intelligence. I can think of few better ways of testing. As such it would be all but impossible to reason with them. It always amuses me the way bigots get so upset by humour that pokes fun at bigots. The Simpsons is a good example of that sort of humour that travels well and yet so many bigots (aka right wingers) are offended by it.
Basically the bigots crede is that it's OK to make fun of anybody that's not like me, but it's not OK to make fun of me or people like me.
The majority of white people are not racist, but people like you want to occupy the moral high ground by assuming that they are. There are bigots of every race, creed, colour, religion and sex and we need to deal with all of them. Not just the white ones. If you live in a predominantly white society then most of the racism you encounter will be practiced by caucasians against others. Move to a community where the majority population in not white and you will find racism heading off in another direction.
I live near a city where fifty years ago an asian population was begining to move in and there was a lot of racist feeling against them. Mostly of the kind that managed to accuse those people of being lazy good for nothings who were coming over here to live on benefits while somehow at the same time stealing all the jobs. Wind forward fifty years and some 10% of the population of that city is east european. Travel to one of the asian neighbourhoods and you will find plenty of asians willing to tell you that the easy europeans are lazy good for nothings who were coming over here to live on benefits while somehow at the same time stealing all the jobs. Plus ca change.
It doesn't stop being racism because its practitioners have dark skin and its targets generally white.
All bigotry is bad. Period.
If we were still using Linnean colour taxonomy we'd still be calling each other "Red Skins" and "Yellow Bellies". But no, we have replaced that outdated and racist taxonomy with something better, regional taxonomy. Now we are split by place of birth, but soon we can develop a new taxonomy based in genetic mutations. Hopefully I'll be part of the "Low-Aggression Variant" group.
However, our classifications serve a functional-analytic purpose, so it is a dual-purpose phenomena. One to improve our understanding through manipulation of discriminate symbols, and the other to improve our use of symbols for the purposes of manipluation and discrimination.
Dumb or redneck are subjective, but being blonde and having a hillbilly heritage is a cultural background and a racial characteristic, same as any of the above. That's why people comment that it's silly - we don't all take these associations as vindictive, even the supposed target.
True racism is very different from garden variety stupidity, and we'd do well as a culture to differentiate the two before going overboard.
I'm sick of political correctness. The charge of racism has been used so much that it's lost its power. Even if these *are* racist, and I certainly don't think they are, it's the smug self-important sense of superiority that annoys me. No, the Mexican caricature is not my culture. Neither is the guy holding the picture. I don't appreciate the assumption that he speaks for me because I happen to be from the same background.
Using race to vilify and call out a certain group of people to shame or humiliate them is a far far far cry from taking the huourous side and enjoying a widely held stereotype as a part of traditional eve of make believe and candy.
As others have said above .. fuck PC movements like this, they do nothing but make the problem worse.
I live in Munich, if I were to be offended everytime someone mocked my culture, I'd go running around crying and slobbering for two weeks on end every year when Oktoberfest comes around. Millions of visitors dress up in Lederhosen and Dirndl and most of them look terrible in their cheap fake leather or they think they're sexy when wearing their dress mini, which is culturally unthinkable.
I see that as what it is: It's just a coustume for partying, not a mockery of my heritage. I laugh about it, that's it. And I admire someone who got an authentic one.
If we ban the donkey-riding Mexican for Halloween, then we might as well ban witches, for the Wicca could feel offended. No more vampires, there are people allergic to sunlight, don't mock them! No more Frankenstein, the scientist might feel offended!
Come on!!
Honestly. Why are these people so weak as individuals that they are personally offended by people dressing up as their version of rednecks? If they are offended, then they have implied that everyone of their "race" should be associated with those elements that DO exist. There ARE such things as inner city thugs. Donkeys ARE used in Mexico by peasants, who once looked and dressed like that. Geishas ARE real, as are terrorists. What could possibly be wrong with dressing up as any of them?
By the same logic, Eastern Europeans should get offended by Dracula costumes, as he is Eastern European. It just makes no sense. These kids need to grow beyond their "race". Until they do, they will never advance beyond the borders they have set for themselves.