So my neighborhood puts on an annual Halloween carnival. Everyone brings a sack of candy and a package of hot dogs, and the neighborhood association pays for the buns, tea, chips and condiments. They typically block off a cul-de-sac or the end of a dead-end street and have it there.
Various dads have built little carnival games- ring toss, skee-ball, bean-bag toss type games, and the kids play them and get candy. There’s usually a bounce-house, and the kids just sort of roam free with the parents keeping a general eye on them. It’s a great time for the kids, and fun for the parents as well.
Here’s where it gets weird. My neighborhood is predominantly white and middle class- lots of 2-income professional families, older retired people and high single-income families (drs and lawyers). Nearby there are a LOT of low-income apartments that are primarily black. Of course the apartment people have got wind that the house folks have trick-or-treat candy, and in the 7 years I’ve lived in this house, I’d say that more than 90% of the trick or treaters are apartment kids coming around, and probably 60% of those are teenagers without costumes just wanting free candy and being obnoxious, loud and profane. And they come bang on your door at like 9:30, and get pissed off if you’ve run out of candy. They also roam around until about 11, generally being pests, and waking people up. The younger ones usually have their parents with them… in someone else’s neighborhood.
So here’s my dilemma- I don’t have a big desire to hand out free candy to non-neighborhood kids. Not because they’re primarily black, but because they don’t live in my neighborhood. And I have a feeling that the reason for the Halloween carnival is much the same- they don’t like having to hand out 3x the amount of candy that they’d have to if it was only neighborhood kids, but the flood of apartment kids makes the amount of candy that’s required absurd.
So I feel like there may be a somewhat hidden racist component to the Halloween carnival, but at the same time, WTF? Go trick or treat in your apartments, don’t expect me to foot the bill for your kids’ halloween candy when you don’t even live in my neighborhood!
Please elaborate on the word “nearby”. Perhaps they consider themselves to be part of your neighborhood. Maybe the solution is to invite the apartments to be part of your neighborhood association, and have those parents share in the expenses and work.
Nearby as in across a road, a wooded creek and a park on one side, and on the far side of a set of condominiums on the other. Not too far as the crow flies, but definitely not part of the neighborhood. There’s very clearly a divide between the single-family houses with yards, and the run-down super-ghetto apartments. My house is barely within the far SE corner of area #10. So you can imagine that the actual single-family homes more or less bracketed by areas 2, 10 and 13 aren’t real wild about the apartment people who live there.
I never considered Halloween trick or treating to be limited to one’s own neighborhood. Around here parents sometimes drive their kids to the “best” neighborhoods for candy and decorations.
Personally, I don’t care for the holiday, and tend to ignore it. But if your neighborhood does it up big time, getting a lot of action from down the road should be expected.
Oh, and you poor ghetto kids? Don’t expect me to foot the bill for your schools when you don’t even live in my rich suburban community.
I can get behind not wanting to give out candy to obnoxious, costumeless teenagers. But, if you can afford to give out candy, begrudging the “apartment kids” some is just mean. It’s not necessarily racist, but it does display an “us vs. them” mentality.
I have always disliked the whole Halloween thing. I find the idea of sending kids round begging for sweets, or demanding them with menaces (**trick **or treat) distasteful.
The whole thing is heavily promoted by supermarkets to boost sales in an otherwise quiet period. It used to be schools too - but I think that there has been a change of policy there.
What I would do: get together with all the other people in the neighborhood and decide on time, age and/or costume limits for the trick-or-treating. Print up flyers stating this policy and put them everywhere.
Then, suck it up and pay for the candy if people come to your door at the prescribed time, aren’t too old and/or wear a costume. If not, they get nothing.
The annoyance on my part is that I already bring candy to the neighborhood Halloween carnival… which is on Halloween, for the neighborhood kids, along with hot dogs and buns.
Then, when I get home, I basically get harassed by people who aren’t even from my neighborhood.
I guess it’s my upbringing- we stuck to the local neighborhood because that’s where you trick-or-treated. I think a time or two we may have gone to the mall when the weather was bad, but we absolutely never went to a “better” neighborhood to sponge off people with more cash than us.
The idea that people would do that is kind of offensive to me; it’s not about who gives out better candy, but rather the experience and fun of trick-or-treating. And if they’re not coming because the pickings are better in my neighborhood, and it’s because where they live sucks so bad with regard to trick or treating that they have to come to where I live, then they need to address that issue where they live, not expect my neighborhood to provide it for them.
And, I already foot the school bill for them- we’re all in the same school district.
Some people, maybe even some of your neighbors, encourage treat or treaters from far and wide. They enjoy seeing lots of kids show up at their door. I know a woman like that, she decorates the heck out of her house and yard, and expects 100s of visitors. Like I said earlier, it’s not my thing. It is, however, part of living in a home in most places in the U.S. these days.
Like the OP, I live in Dallas, and my neighborhood is also a Halloween free-for-all. The importation of school-age poor kids doesn’t bug me in the least: it’s a nice safe place for them to walk and there’s a lot more candy than where they live. Best of all, they go home at a reasonable hour.
The highschoolers/college kids piss me off to no end. We get equal proportions of poor black teenagers and overprivileged white ones. Obnoxious little assholes, every last one of them. No costumes, and a general air of “Gotcha, dumbass, what are going to do about it?” Many of them stare at you silently, while you dutifully shovel sugar into their bags. Once in a while they mutter unclever insults. It’s like working in a reverse toll booth.
Our strategy is to buy a reasonable amount of candy (like 15 pounds) and turn off the light when it runs out or when the little kids stop coming, about 8:00. This doesn’t stop dumb shits from pounding on the door and hollering obscenities, but we can just ignore them for a couple hours. This year I’m going to disconnect the doorbell to keep them from waking up my kids.
Kids going out of their neighborhood to get better treats is just a fact of life.
Teenagers not wearing costumes, though - while a fact of life, it’s also a fact of life that it doesn’t entitle them to candy. I think you need to figure out a compromise where whoever shows up in costume can get candy.
If you have to bring a bag of candy and some hot dogs to the carnival, then why doesn’t whoever runs the carnival require that of everybody? If the apartment families (assuming entire families show up and not just the kids) want to be part of it, then they have to “put up” equally with the neighborhood families.
As for who can go trick-or-treating where, you’re just going to have to live with it. I for one made it a point to cover a large amount of my community - far more than anything that could be called “my neighborhood”. However, I agree with the “no costume, no candy” policy. The only thing you have to worry about is somebody who remembers where you live; if you’re lucky, the damage will be limited to washing paint of the front of your house (and you did remember not to leave your car on the street directly in front of your house, right?). Then again, I wonder how many would respond, “I am wearing a costume - don’t you recognize Michael Brown?”
I’ve seen “No Costume, No Candy.” signs around here. May get one myself this year. Also, after the little kids stop coming (about 8pm or so), I too shut off the front lights and doorbell.