First things first: I am a white lady. I am a white lady who is raising multiracial kids (African, Native American, Mexican American, and biracial) through adoption, along with two white boys we made ourselves. I want to share with you what I’ve learned through reading, listening and parenting, but I’m still very much a student when it comes to cultural appropriation and the unique ways Halloween brings up questions of what’s appropriate. If you have more questions than are answered here, I’d encourage you to do additional reading of your own. (This piece by Eugue Cho is helpful, as is this article.)
The idea of cultural appropriation was something I had read about, but I didn’t feel the personal impact until the first Halloween I saw people posting pictures of their kids dressed as “Indians” while I was teaching my son about his Native American heritage. My son is Lakota and he is so proud to be. He loves to read about his ancestors, talk about them, and imagine what his life would be like if had experienced the life his ancestors lived. We have done a lot of research about his people and we also educate ourselves about the hardships they face today. They have a culture rich in symbolism and history.
“Indians” aren’t some fictional people, some character to borrow for an evening. To see white children with headdresses and face paint felt so dismissive and disrespectful. I ached thinking about my son running into those people on Halloween and seeing his precious culture being treated so casually. Because I am a white lady, I know that allowing your white child to dress that way may not be based in a desire to cause offense to Native Americans, but it is likely based in ignorance. It’s a lack of awareness of how it might feel to someone else to essentially see your culture treated like a joke.
So much of my “culture” is just majority white culture, so it can be hard to identify with how it would feel to see people dressing up as you or your ancestors. The closest comparison I have been able to come up with is to imagine people are dressing up in priest robes or a nun’s habit and then laughing while they do exaggerated religious movements or swing a cross necklace around while they bob for apples. Although I’m not Catholic, my faith is very important and to imagine someone being that casual about the things I respect and honor makes me feel belittled and angry. It would feel like they are mocking me and my beliefs. Maybe that comparison won’t resonate for everybody, but I think it’s a start. So many of the cultures we “borrow” from, we don’t even know the significance of what we’ve borrowed.
So what can you dress up as? How can you do it respectfully?
Not everybody lands in the same place on this issue, but I’ll give you my guidelines in case they’re helpful:
-No generic cultural costumes. Don’t be an Indian Princess or a Chinese Lady. If you’re just straight up being another race or ethnicity, that’s a problem.
-Don’t wear anything you’d feel uncomfortable wearing in front of a person from that culture. Imagine your child trick-or-treating at the home of someone from that cultural group. How do you think they would feel about your child’s costume?
-No body paint. Race is more complicated than the color of your skin. Don’t try and put on someone else’s race by changing your skin color.
-Don’t be a negative stereotype of someone else’s race. I feel like this should go without saying, but this is just obviously offensive and not funny. Don’t be that guy.
What can you do?
-Be a specific fictional character of another race. If your white child wants to be Moana or Black Panther and can follow the rules above, I don’t have a problem with it. We want to encourage our kids to appreciate and learn about other cultures, so when they latch on to a fictional character that embodies the positive traits of that culture, I’m happy for them to embrace it.
-Be a specific real life hero of another race. If your white child wants to wear a Michael Jordan jersey, or be Michelle Obama and they can do it while following the rules above (no blackface, nothing disrespectful), I can support that. We want our kids to find role models they admire from other races and cultural groups. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then we want our kids to imitate people worthy of respect from whatever racial group they find them.
Halloween is a time of fantasy for our kids where they can take on another identity. We want to help them do that respectfully and thoughtfully. This is a great opportunity for us to talk through the complexity of race with our kids. We don’t need to approach it with fear, but with a healthy degree of respect. And if you’ve messed up in the past, either in how you dressed as a kid or how you’ve allowed your kids to dress, that’s an important conversation to have with your kids. This is a great time to model for your kids how you can learn and grow.
6 Comments
Leave a reply →