Racism and costumes

Making a blog about racism around this time of year would mean that I am pretty much obligated to mention the issue of racist Halloween costumes (in addition to the sexist, classist, or even those costumes that manage to be an ambitious combination of offensive stereotypes).

A college senior from Ohio University has successfully launched a poster campaign to raise awareness about the offensiveness of some Halloween costumes-- she has done this as the president of a student organization from Ohio University called Students Teaching About Racism in Society (STARS). She posted some images of some of the posters (a couple are seen here) on her tumblr account and has become "tumblr famous." Her latest post of poster images posted only 3 days ago had 15,000 notes when I started writing this post and at this moment reached 16,000 notes and is still climbing.

(I have to confess that I actually bought and wore a similar poncho and sombrero to the one featured to the left as a Halloween costume while in high school)

She mentions that they intended to "educate and create dialogue" and also mentions that STARS will be posting the posters around their campus. They probably intended to create dialogue on campus, but they managed to attract attention all over. She even mentions in her tumblr that she is consulting a lawyer to protect their rights to the posters which are spreading across the internet and getting attention from places far from Ohio University. One of her latest posts is about her having just done an interview with CNN.

What this student organization is doing is very important and I think they have gone about it in a very clever way with their simple, attention-grabbing posters with a short and concise message. I encourage you to think about your potential Halloween costume and maybe even reconsider wearing it so that we may attempt to change this practice of annually wearing offensive costumes.

There will of course be those who will still go out to Halloween parties in insensitive costumes, but with outspoken opposition to such costumes and increased dialogue, perhaps we can spread knowledge in the same way this small student organization has spread their posters.