Ethnic Halloween costumes: offensive?

Is it considered bad taste these days to use ethnic outfits/regalia for a halloween costume (assuming you’re from a different background yourself)? For example, dressing up as a Gypsy, a hula dancer, a Geisha etc…

(I’m not talking about something stupid like Al Joleson-style blackface, but I’ve met a few people who considered more “benign” stereotypes (hula girl, for example) to be on the same level)

Depending on whom I ask I get different answers, including:

  1. "Yes, it’s offensive because it’s making a mockery of [fill in the blank] and/or it implies that the culture is so shallow as to suggest one can “join” it by a change of clothes

  2. “Yes, it’s offensive because you’re implying that being a [fill-in-the-blank” is in the same league as being a monster or make-believe creature"

  3. “No, assuming that the outfit is an accurate representation”

  4. “No, it’s not offensive. Anyone who takes a frigging costume personally is a big baby.”
    What do you all think? Who’s right?

You just want our opinions? Here’s mine.

#5.

which actually is #4 on the list but you thought I wouldnt NOTICE that didnt you but I DID ha ha ha

I suppose it would be possible to choose a costume to represent a certain ethnic group, and then add your own touches of buffoonery that mock the group (a la minstrel show antics.) Otherwise, dressing up in a costume such as Gypsy or hula dancer isn’t really an ethnic insult. You would be dressing up as the idea of a Gypsy or hula dancer, ideas that have their own conception in the public’s mind apart from their reality.

I suppose one might dress up as a Gypsy and perpetuate negative stereotypes about Gypsies, like you could go around the neighborhood attempting to steal children, pick pockets, deliver lycanthropic curses, and scam people with gawdy fortune-telling setups. An actual Gypsy might find that offensive, or she might stop to give the kid helpful tips. I don’t really know which, but either way it would be hilarious. C’mon, Gypsies!

If we start down this road, next thing you know it will be unacceptable to dress up as monsters, because ugly people will complain, and as ghosts, because relatives of dead people will be offended. I guess that makes me a number 5 (4)

Tars Tarkas-

Then the next thing you know, you’re offending the undead by dressing up as a vampire. You don’t want to piss them off, do you? (4 or 5, whatever)

<Bart Simpson>
“Please, we prefer to be called the ‘living-impaired’.”
<Bart Simpson>

Hmm. One part of me says, “Well, theoretically, it should be on the same level as blackface, which strikes me as obviously offensive.”
On the other hand, I just know in my gut that there’s nothing offensive in little girls dressed as hula dancers or gypsyies.

So now I’m wondering how that contradiction is resolving tself in my head. I think the answer is that blackface represents nothing real EXCEPT a deeply negative stereotype. There is no way to do "respectful’ or “accurate” blackface, the entire costume is based on exaggeration and stereotype. It might be possible to make a hula costume offensive in the same way if there were an obvious racial stereotype to add or exploit regarding Hawaiian women, but darned if I can come up with one. Similarly, there’s a lot of difference between, say, a girl dressed in a cheongsam and someone wearing absurd teeth, a pigtail, and a conical hat trying to be portray a coolie.

So, I guess some combination of 3+5…

I think there is a little blurrier line than some seem to see. A “gypsy” or “hula” costume is slightly offensive.
One year a good friend of mine, who happens to be a native-American, made a hopping-vampire costume for halloween. We both thought it was very cool, but people who had never seen a hopping-vampire movie might have assumed he was making fun of the Chinese.
Intention to offend is the most important thing, but those who are offended shouldn’t be called “cry babies”…

#5 with the same caveat provided by Rex Dart inasmuch as it would be innapropriate for me to do something to perpetuate negative stereotypes. For example, if I did myself up in blackface and ran around calling people “massa”, that would clearly be offensive.
As far as a Hula Dancer-- how does this offend people exactly? Its not like there has ever been a stigma associated with Hula dancing (at least, not that I know of). Sorry if I have offended any ethnic Hula dancers. I suppose it would be innapropriate if I dressed as a Hula dancer and pretended to be illiterate and confused by the sight of anything other than cocnuts. Something along the lines of going to the door and saying “What is candy? On me island, me eat only coconut. We eat coconut and dance!”

What the hoth is a “hopping vampire?”

(My first Halloween that I have memory of, my mother dressed me up as a gypsy.)

Put me down for #5 … although I am sure there are enough babies out there in the world who WILL get their knickers in a twist over a kid’s Halloween outfit.

In Chinese movies, vampires are portrayed as hopping- due to rigor mortis that’s the only way they can move. The costume my friend made was a fancy chinese robe with the tall burial hat and long fingernails- we knew what he was supposed to be, but some people might have thought he was supposed to be Fu Manchu or something…

Two words: coconut brassiere

In part I suppose it depends on who’s doing it and the spirit in which it’s done. I know there are plenty of people who take their hula seriously, religiously even, who would likely be offended by an adult who was going for the shimmy-shimmy, bump-and-grind, “little brown gal in a little grass shack”, tourista-corrupted portrayal of hula. Yeah, it exists, but it’s a pretty offensive mockery of the real thing.

I wouldn’t have any objection to a little girl who thought it was a pretty and exotic thing to dress up as a hula dancer (and since Halloween costumes always reflect the latest movie releases, I’ll bet there are a few Lilos on the street this fall). But I don’t do hula and I am not Native Hawaiian, so there may be more I am missing than I am aware of.

I personally wouldn’t have a problem with a gypsy or hula costume, but I would certainly be understanding if someone did find it offensive to them.

I can’t quite go with #5 completely, as I saw someone out in the bars with an SS uniform two years ago. Not only that, but his friends actually acknowledged that they were with him. If someone I know pulled a stunt like that, they’d spend Halloween (and probably Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years) alone.

Most of me says that if you truly believe in living in a free society, you do not have the right to not be offended. If a person wants to dress as a blackface minstril, a hula dancer, Gastapo, Fighting Irishman, or hillbilly redneck, that’s their business. They are the ones who must deal with consequences of people thinking they are a jerk or being asked to leave by an offended host.
At a college Halloween party, I dressed as a black character from a movie, including brown face paint. My natural skin color is, as you may have guessed, white. I felt that since a) I was faithfully representing the character in the movie and b) it was part of an ensamble of other characters no one should get offended. As a matter of fact, the only people to make any negative comments were a couple of (white) guys I knew who were PC crybaby pussies anyway.

What is SS? Social Services is all that comes to my mind, but I don’t think that is what you are referring to.

As for the original post, I acknowledge that anything can be offensive, but view the fault as being with the offendee not the offender. No one is born being offended by anything (some things scare babies, but nothing offends them). That said, being offended is a learned behavior that can be unlearned as well. It took training to learn to be offended by something and with a little more training you can learn to not be bothered by it. So my vote is something like #5 except that I do acknowledge that the costume may be offensive.

I believe he is referring to the Schutzpolizei. That would be possibly offensive, the whole Nazi thing you know.

I think the intent to offend has a lot to do with it. Otherwise you couldn’t go as anything other than what you are, if you wanted to carry it to an extreme.

I couldn’t go to a party dressed as a soldier, because I’ve never served in the military, and that could be seen as offensive to veterans. I couldn’t dress up as Groucho Marx, because I’m not a Jewish vaudevillian. Wouldn’t want to offend any of them (if any are still left). I couldn’t dress in drag because I’m not a woman or a transvestite. Let’s not offend any of these people, okay?

That being said, there is a big difference between dressing in the minstrel-show blackface and doing a whole Steppin Fetchit schtick, and a Caucasian man dressing up as Othello. Or a little girl wearing a grass skirt and coconut brassiere, and a little girl dressing up in a sarong with a lei around her neck. They’re both sorta South Pacific-themed, but the exagerration tends to make the former a little less acceptable, I think.

It’s schutzstaffel, Himmler’s police force.

I still find it hard to believe that when I was a kid it was still possible to go to the local 5 and dime and pick up blister packs of greasepaint makeup packaged as “Minstrel” or “Chinese” makeup. Damned right it’s now considered a racial slur. On the other hand, I don’t think that a particular profession or type within an ethnic or cultuyral group would be offensive – that’s what dress-up is all about, right? So “Kabuki Actor” isn’t offensive, but “Japanese” is.

How about if I blacked up, wore a nice suit and carried a briefcase, coming as a black lawyer or politician?

[Note to the humor-impaired: above is a JOKE]

**Procacious **–

The “fault” is with the offendee? In every case? And should be unlearned? Um… why?

I’m assuming you don’t consider all learned behavior to be inherently “faulty” or you wouldn’t be hanging around here, reading and writing and stuff. Do you consider being offended to be a moral deficiency? I can certainly see some reactions to being offended to be faulty or bad or even morally wrong (you don’t assault someone who offends you, for example, or spread vicious lies behind their back). Or do you consider being offended a bad thing because it serves no useful purpose but to discomfit the offended? (I’m not sure that’s true… have to think about that…) If you acknowledge a costume can be offensive, it seems like “offense” has a value outside individual learned behavior; ie, if a costume is offensive, then isn’t being offended the appropriate reaction to it?