Monday, October 28, 2013

Halloween Costumes and White Privilege



First of all, I'm going to refer to white privilege during this post. If you are unfamiliar with white privilege, I suggest you look it up first. Also, keep in mind that while I did study white privilege for a class in college, I'm by no means an expert on the subject, and I'm not pretending to be.

I stumbled upon this article about a group of college students who are expressing disapproval of some of the Halloween costumes out there. I had shared the article on Facebook and received several different (but equally well thought-out!) responses. There are also a lot of thoughtful, varied comments on the page itself. I wanted to share my thoughts on here. A few people also brought up the interesting question of “Is it okay to dress like witches?” and “Is it okay to dress like Jesus/G-d?” While those are excellent questions, those are separate issues from race, and I'm not going to address them in this post. I might do another post if I have time. I'll have to see; it's going to be a busy week.

A lot of people were in agreement that a white person dressing like a Native American or putting on blackface is inappropriate. But some people didn't see the problem with dressing in Asian or Hispanic costumes like the ones shown in the picture. This was a very thoughtful, respectful discussion for the most part. But I have to wonder how much knowledge and understanding of white privilege went into the discussion.

White privilege is the easiest to identify when you are talking about our historical relations with black people and Native Americans. It can be more subtle, I think, when we're talking about other ethnic groups, because in our white minds, oppression of those groups is not as blatant. I think the reason people think that is because oppression of other races like Asians and Hispanics isn't as well-known. If it was, it would be easier to see that white privilege exists in our relations with other minorities as well.

The subject of costumes is an issue of white privilege when it doesn't add up if you turn the situation around. If someone who wasn't white decided to dress up in a Scandinavian folk outfit as a means of dressing up as a “white person” we would, understandably, take offense. “White culture” is not a homogenous thing. Not every white person is Scandinavian, and that costume does not accurately describe ALL Scandinavians. Racism says that white privilege is irrelevant and it doesn't matter if we do that to non-whites. White privilege says, “It would be wrong if they did it, so it needs to be wrong when we do it.”