Halloween costumes and insensitivity
With costumes popping up in stores, I’m often bothered by the offensive stereotypes of people of color portrayed in generic Halloween costumes. While sometimes jokes ring true and I don’t mean to be a P.C. freak, it can heighten boundaries, damage feelings, and box in a whole diverse people group. Also this week, I have been reading this book from my friend Brian called “Without a Net, the female experience of growing up working class”. This excerpt painfully convicted me:
“Friends of friends had a “white trash”-themed barbecue […] Many people came fake-pregnant, with giant Budweiser cans, fake southern accents, and severe blue eyeshadow. What to do? I thought about how “trashy” it is for poor people to have children, how different poor people’s substance abuse is surveyed and punished, how easily these white people employed a term that suggests that all nonwhite people are trash while only some white people require such labeling. I thought about the time you were invited to a white-trash event where people were encouraged to black out their teeth and I thought of how Mom lived her whole life hiding she had dentures- like everyone in her family- from a time when “dental care for the poor” was pulling out all their teeth in adolescence […]”
Freshman year, I had no last-minute ideas at my private university for a costume and someone suggested “white trash”. I did not think twice about this quick and easy option because it was not like, an inaccurate representation of another people group to take in their wild hair, “trashy” clothes, baby bump and lipsticked teeth. Grace Moroney, you were wrong. I want to vomit at my own insensitivity. It’s not as if I am a CLEAN caucasian while others are the DIRTY version of caucasian. I repent of such behavior and pray for divine assistance to represent my equality with all people, today and forevermore.
