Posts Tagged ‘being stereotypical’
Halloween: About funky costumes, scary myths or racist opportunities?
Halloween is a time for partying, dressing up and having fun with a bit of harmless – but scary – make-believe.
For the third year, my nieces celebrated Halloween at home and invited over two dozen friends, an opportunity to getting together, and intent on looking different for a night of dancing…
DAMIEN GAYLE UPDATED his post of Oct. 25, 2011
‘We’re a culture, not a costume’:
Students launch poster campaign against ‘racist’ Halloween costumes
A group of college students are taking a stand against some costumes which can cause hurt and humiliation to people from minority ethnic groups.
Students Teaching Against Racism in Society, an Ohio University student group, have created a poster campaign to highlight the racial stereotyping all too common in Halloween party dress.
The campaign, headlined ‘We’re a culture, not a costume’, shows images of people of different ethnic groups holding up images party-goers whose costumes they say lampoon their cultures.
Above each image, the posters read: ‘This is not who I am, and this is not okay.’
They have provoked an online row over whether the costumes are actually racist, or whether they are just in good fun.
One blogger who wrote about the posters two days ago had to disable comments on her website after she got 3,000 views and comments from ‘rude, racist people.’
On the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind blog, Melissa Sipin wrote of the campaign: ‘These posters act as a public service announcement for colored [sic] communities.
‘It’s about respect, human dignity, and the acceptance of other cultures (these posters simply ask people to think before they choose their Halloween costume).’
Sipin added: ‘What these costumes have in common is that they make caricatures out of cultures, and that is simply not okay.’
‘This is not who I am, and this is not okay’: The posters highlight the crass racial and cultural stereotypes that emerge in Halloween fancy dress each year
One poster shows a young Arab-American man holding up an image of a Halloween reveller wearing Arabic dress and a suicide bombers vest.
Another shows a Native American man holding a picture of two women with paint on their faces and feathers in their hair holding a sign reading, ‘Me wantum piece [sic]… not war.’
A third poster shows an Asian American woman holding up a picture of a woman dressed as a Japanese geisha girl, with silk kimono and heavy white foundation.
Row: Online comments have urged the students behind the campaign to ‘get a sense of humour’
On the Huffington Post, where the story has also been reported, website comments were split over whether the costumes could be judged offensive.
Many could see nothing wrong with dressing according to racial stereotypes: A user going by the screen name Masterkcb1 wrote on the site: ‘People need to get a sense of humour, and quit taking everything so seriously.
‘If I can’t dress like a bandito then nobody can dress like a ghost because I don’t have a tan and I find it offensive.‘
Note: Here are a few comments and opinions I read on FB about 3 sophisticated Lebanese women dressing up like their dark colored maids.
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Sabine Choucair what’s the big deal? instead of fighting these women this person should fight the fact of having “maids” ! Other than that, people are free to dress up the way they like in Halloween – they can take whatever is there in the society and use it! Why don’t we find “racism blog posts” about people dressing up like Bob Marley. ps: last year i was thinking to dress up like a “Lebanese woman” (how racist of me )
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Joanna Choukeir Hojeily you have a really good point, but a Lebanese woman chooses to dress up the way she does. Domestic workers do not have that choice, and that dress code is not representative of their fashion or their colour. A maid can be of any ethnicity. Why did they paint their faces black? Dressing up the way you want is ok, but being stereotypical is not.
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Sabine Choucair It’s Halloween! And people can take faces/ characters/ stereotypes from real life. 3adeh (very usual).
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Joanna Choukeir Hojeily How would maids feel if they saw them in these costumes? It might be fun, but it’s insensitiveAd AlHusseini I had to barge in! Sabine you find it healthy to dress up like this? the fact in this situation is retarded from the start! why would a maid be dressed in her own costume from the start? is she in school?! she’s only being differentiated from the other part of the family! why can’t she wear her own clothes. none the less probably for Lebanese ppl to dress like maids maybe is more critical due to how our culture treats them.
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Bob Marley costume is not racist!! the guy had his way of getting dressed!! MAID! i don’t think they reach Lebanon and get all happy of the shit they wear! it was never by choice! dress up like Hitler in Germany he is a character, but you’d be arrested the second you go in public. why? because this costume had made billions suffer! Lebanese ppl had and still are making million of foreign worker suffer!
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2053134/Students-launch-poster-campaign-racist-Halloween-costumes.html#ixzz2jVyclFg9
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