Not that I disagree with the gist of the rest of your post*, but I just wanted to point out that I don’t care who you are, you’ll still do a better job than Netanyahu… :eek:
The guys at Auburn claimed that as well. Odd that the black best friends didn’t show up with the noose on, isn’t it?
Maybe John Mayer lent him his “Hood Pass” for the evening. That would make it okay I think.
They won first prize for that? Where’s the imagination?
I’m going next year. I’m dressing up as John F Kennedy with a bottle of fake blood poured on my head. And a sign around my neck saying “Too soon?”
My god. Sampiro got whooshed. El Gui gets a million points.
And now the branch of the Legion involved in the debacle has been ordered closed “indefinitely”. As it says in the linked article, now the whole town is being punished because of the actions of a few (actions, in fact, which may not have even been nearly as egregious as some would have had us believe).
What was Prince Harry doing in Canada?
Apostrophe’s Gone Wild.
The costume was definitely in poor taste for the audience of the party, but claiming it’s racist, without knowing the motivations of the two guys seems like a stretch to me, particularly in the context that the offended guy specifically states that he’s never had a racist issue in 12 years. If I were to see something like that, them being Canadians, I’d see it more as commentary about how ridiculous Americans are about race.
Seriously, I don’t celebrate Halloween anymore, but even when I did, I never saw a Halloween costume as condoning the acts of the people that they dress up as. For instance, if someone dresses up as Freddy or Jason, are they condoning murder sprees? If someone dresses up as a Witch or demon, are they condoning pagan or satanic rites? It’s one thing if someone is dressed up in a certain way on a random day, but in the context of Halloween, I’d not think anything more of it unless they did something to indicate they sympathized with the subjects (eg, racial slurs).
So, yeah, poor taste, considering it was a sponsored event and the Legion probably should have turned them away to avoid this sort of negative publicity, but that just makes it stupid, not racist.
Didn’t you mean ye olde orthography?
My choice for a “bad taste costume at a Canadian Legion Hall” would have been to put on my wife’s underwear and some military decorations and go as Colonel Russell Williams.
[Too soon? 
]
No, perfect
Hey, my wife could be an ‘accessory’ too - all that is needed is a dog collar/leash and some duct tape!
[Would I have won first prize? I dare to dream!]
The provincial Legion has re-opened the local branch, but under provincial control, to ensure that the annual Poppy Drive and Rememberance Day ceremonies will go ahead: Legion Reopens Branch.
The costume is undeniably racist in outcome, regardless of intent. Whether the costume had intentions of racism is up for discussion, but the fact that the costume is racist is not debatable. Intent does not distinguish whether something is or is not racist. That doesn’t mean it can’t still be funny, even to some black people. But saying the costume was not racist is delusional.
The fact that this occurred in Canada, and not, say, rural Alabama, leads me to believe that it’s not a malicious expression of racism. That doesn’t mean it isn’t still racist. Understanding of and the ability to laugh at the costume is predicated by knowledge of the (past) racism of others.
The fact that it won the contest says absolutely nothing about the acceptability of the costume. For all we know, everyone there was a racist. Maybe everyone there just didn’t care about the racist implications (much like the majority of people in this thread), and found it funny. That’s not really relevant to the discussion.
Witches were themselves a persecuted group. Dressing up as a witch-burner (complete with a friend who was dressed as a witch attached to a stake and pretending to burn in agony) would be analogous to this situation. Simply dressing as a witch is not.
Freddy and Jason are movie characters. Slavery and lynchings actually happened.
For the record, I’d have laughed at the costume. But I’d never try to claim it weren’t racist. Because it is.
Really? I had thought they were an imaginary group, and that anyone prosecuted as a witch was pretty much just an unfortunate individual caught up in a baffling and delusion-driven mass hysteria.
If there really had been a Wiccan religion as such (however furtively practiced) during the era of the Salem witch trials, I have to give the Puritans props for being able to obliterate its practice so completely that no confirmed internal record of its existence has survived.
Earlier today, he was Jewish, which makes the Nazi costume all right.
headache If he were truly celebrating the KKK in any way, then I obviously agree it’s a travesty. (The black face certainly looked awful regardless, but it was hard to tell from the picture.)
If not, the question is, was it too close to the source events to be obviously painful to people. A KKK costume in Texas, I assume, would be too close to the bone. A Genghis Khan costume in the UK, I assume would be ok. Is a KKK costume in Canada over the top? Given the reaction, it obviously IS. But did they have reason to know that? It seems entirely likely that everyone in this Canadian town thinks of the KKK as an abstract historical event. If so, does it count as “ill-thought-out but not a big deal”?
