msmith: *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. […] 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.*
This is confusing. First you seem to say that people should take responsibility for their own (possibly offensive) costume ideas, and just accept the consequences if others are offended by them. Then you spend the next paragraph justifying why your own “pseudo-blackface” costume was unobjectionable, and declaring that nobody “should” have been offended by it, and assuring us that the only people who were offended “were PC crybaby pussies anyway.”
Why the double standard? If you have the right to offend people with your costume choice, why get all defensive about whether or not your choice should have been considered offensive? Why not just say “Yup, I picked what I thought was a good costume, though a couple people found it offensive” and leave it at that?
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?
I consider being offended to be a weakness because it serves no useful purpose but to discomfort the offended person. During the time that a person is offended he/she is paying less attention to his/her surroundings. They may miss positive opportunities or be overcome by negative events due to their lack of awareness (for example, it is easier to sneak up and rob a person that is offended because they are too upset to notice they are being stalked). A person that avoids a behavior without being offended is in a superior position to one that only avoids a behavior because it is offensive to him/her. A person can train himself/herself to avoid doing certain things without being offended by them. If a person chooses to not even try to overcome the weakness that is causing them to be offended, I site the fault with that person, not with the people that offended them.
It is true that people can try to avoid dressing in certain ways that offend others, but they should not have to cater their behavior to the wishes of the weakest individuals. And when you consider that all outfits are considered distasteful to at least some of the population, you cannot avoid upsetting others even if you tried. And some things are simply genetic. Some people are born with severe disfigurements and they offend people simply by going out in public. Clearly that is a problem with the people that are being offended.
How about a white teenager from an affluent suburb with his pants hanging down to his knees, speaking ebonics? Shouldn’t this be construed as a parody of a racial group? Or is he or she serious?
Nobody has a constitutional right to live their life without ever being offended. Dress up as whatever the hell you like!
I friend of mine once came to a halloween party as a klansman, complete with a 2x4 buring cross (he left that outside). Everybody thought it was great. Even a black guy.
Depends on the context. If you have a ‘Dress like a Nigga’ party then it may be construed as offensive. If you are like 90% of the white high school kids who are doing this because they want to be like Emenem or DMX, then it is ok.
grendel72 quote:
Originally posted by Hail Ants
Nobody has a constitutional right to live their life without ever being offended. Dress up as whatever the hell you like!
By the same standard, don’t be surprised when people think you are an insensitive dipshit if you go out of your way to be offensive.
Pretty much what I was saying. IMHO there is a pretty big grey area. If one or two people are like “I don’t like the hula dancer costume” I would be inclined to say they are overly sensitive. If a person is dressed like a blackfaced minstril or a white pointy-headed “ghost” carring around a big wooden cross with flames on it, and they find a lot of people are taking offense at that, you might want to rethink your costume. But of course, you have every right to wear it and offend as many people as you like if that’s what you are going for.
So I guess the bottom line is, you can dress in highly controvertial costumes if you want, but you probably shouldn’t.
Saw a “Chinese Man Kit” in a store just a couple years ago. It consisted of a cap with pigtail, Fu Manchu moustache, and (the crowning glory) a pair of eyeglasses with flesh-colored latex fill-ins that give the wearer instant “slanty-eyes.” This was the only proof I could find of it’s existence:
Mind you, this shop was in Berkeley, California, the capital of Political Sensitivity. I’m sure you could probably still find your share of “Arab” costumes as well.
Personally, I think Halloween is a time when normal mores should be thrown out and I wouldn’t be offended at anything - even this and I’m half Chinese. After all, I went as Jesus Christ a couple of years ago. But I completely understand other people of color getting annoyed. There’s a long history of us being the butt of jokes.