Culture as a Costume
In lieu of recent Halloween celebrations, many people found themselves contemplating a variety of fun and unique ideas. Halloween is the perfect holiday for self expression. It creates an atmosphere that allows people to be as weird, scary, or funny as they want. With so many amazing costumes existing and even more still being formed by the more creative of us, there is still a prominent issue concerning cultures as costumes. While the sentiment may not have been meant to be racist, it is still inexcusable. You don’t let a child go unreprimanded for bullying or a criminal loose for accidentally committing a crime.
The LSPIRG’s (Laurier Students’ Public Interest Research Group) #IAmNotACostumeCampaign summarizes this privileged way of thinking on their website. LSPIRG is a nonprofit organization that advocates for social and environmental justice.
“If you're reading this and thinking, ‘But it's just a costume’, take a moment to reflect on why you think that's the case. It's likely that your culture and/or identity has not been historically and currently trivialized, mocked, and viewed as ‘funny’ or ‘scary’. It may be viewed as ‘just a joke’, but that joke comes at the real expense of folks’ safety and security. Oppression is not just held up by very public, aggressive and physically violent forms of attack. It is also held up by the denial of rights, by stereotypes, and by dehumanizing folks through ‘jokes’ and caricatures.”
It’s easy to say “It’s just a costume, I’m not hurting anybody” when the culture you’re portraying isn’t yours and you get to take off that harmful image at the end of the night. The people you’re imitating can’t take off their culture so easily. These people face rude glances, microaggressions, and outright racism in their daily lives as it is. To make a mockery out of who they are is to perpetuate this harmful culture and allow it to continue oppressing the various minority groups around the world.
While there are many offensive costumes affecting the actual communities, one of the more commonly degraded by these costumes are Native American people. It’s become normal to walk into a Halloween store and see costumes like “Pocahontas”, “Tribal Warrior” and “Indian Princess”. Native American people have been subjected to violence, genocide, and dehumanization since their first interactions with white settlers in America. From their forced servitude, their forced removal, forced indoctrination into white American society, all the way up to the current injustice they face in and out of reservations, insensitive costumes are just the tip of the iceberg. In an interview with NPR, Henu Josephine Tarrant, a New York-based artist and performer of the Ho-Chunk, Hopi and Rappahannock tribes describes part of the problem behind the costumes.
"It goes deeper than what you're dressed like," she said. "When you really look at it and you really study these tropes and stereotypes and what they mean and how they affect us as Native people, you know they're all rooted in a historically violent past."
Every costume is a depiction of a native who was the victim of oppression. No part of that history was joyous. They are real people, many who are recovering from generations of trauma, and live just like anyone else. To boil them down to a historical figure is to dismiss the real issues they face everyday. The Native Women's Association of Canada suggests the number of missing and murdered indigenous women is close to 4,000. In just Canada alone. It took until this year in the US for the Supreme Court to rule for tribal police to have the authority to detain non-natives suspected of crimes on reservations. How many instances of injustice occurred up until then that native people just had to sit and take? It’s time everyone sees these marginalized groups as the real people they are and stop diminishing their experiences for the sake of a logo, a costume, or a laugh at their expense.
Accused privileged groups are quick to the defense, and more often than not we see the invalidation of minority experiences for the sake of “fun”. When facing major backlash from the community you’re dressing up as and the only people on your side are your own race and other perpetrators, maybe it’s time to reevaluate your perspective. People who are dead set on their views will not be convinced, and it is not the minority and opposing sides’ responsibility to try to change their mind. Doing so is exhausting and rarely fruitful.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Mia Moody-Ramirez, director of American studies at Baylor University states, “Ask yourself the question, does the culture you’re imitating have a history of oppression? Are you benefiting from borrowing from the culture? Are you able to remove something when you get tired of it and return to a privileged culture when others can’t?”
Participants in the offense are not automatically evil people. When you live a sheltered lifestyle where your identity was never a factor in the way people treat you and where your surroundings are others just like you, these precautions are probably not at the forefront of your mind when trying to pick a cool costume. This doesn’t mean you’re exempt from backlash and consequences, it just means that it’s important to be open to discussions related to situations you have no experience with and rethink the way your actions affect others.
So, the next time you’re costume hunting, make sure to keep in mind what you’re representing. Just like LSPIRG stated, “Even if you don’t think you’re vehemently racist, you can still perpetuate racism.”
