- Hey y'all, welcome to another episode of Is This Okay?
Where we talk about things and ask the question,
is this okay?
There we go.
- I'm Jenny.
- I'm Daysha.
- I'm Nyla.
- I'm Chris.
- I'm Becky.
- Today we're gonna talk about a very scary topic,
offensive Halloween costumes.
This was good, that was great.
(laughing)
So this topic came about when I saw
a lot of articles being written about
um, the Moana costume.
It was like this costume,
it was like you know full tats,
and also you could see like the brown skin
underneath the tats,
so I would like to ask friends,
where do you draw the line with offensive costumes?
- Well for me personally,
we see like sexy Indian
and then we also see the warrior.
- When I see Asian costumes,
because a lot of it actually appeals
to a very pan-Asian
like oh Japanese and Chinese
they're like basically the same thing.
- For instance, like that MLK party,
it was like come dressed as black people,
and it's like, so then you have people
throwing up gang signs and wearing baggy clothes
and doing all this shit,
but when have you ever seen a party like,
oh come dressed as white people.
- If I were an offensive costume,
that offended you or something,
and I were to say to you,
Chris it's just a costume,
like get over it, it's just Halloween.
Like, how would you react to that?
- People are like it's just a costume,
it's just a movie, it's just a game,
it's just a kids show,
- It's just something.
- Because you, everyone thinks it's just this one thing,
it normalizes a lot of these horrible like mindsets.
Of like, oh I though black people just look like this,
I though Asian people just look like this,
I thought Native people just look like this
- That's how Native Americans dress
and you would not believe the number of people
who actually, seriously, in all seriousness
will ask me, but isn't that the way Native Americans dress.
- Is it just a matter of doing your research?
- If someone came to me and said,
you know, I want to dress as Pocahontas for Halloween,
or I want to dress as Crazy Horse for Halloween,
I'd be like great.
Learn about them, what tribes they were from,
what their traditions were,
how they actually dressed,
what their actual history was,
not just I'm generically dressing in
this weird little buckskin fringe
and calling in Pocahontas.
If you don't know anything
about the character you're dressing as,
why do you want to you want to dress as that character
in the first place.
Wouldn't you rather dress as something
that you are impressed by,
that you do have some knowledge of.
- Because then how can you say that you're
trying to honor those people and that culture,
if you didn't even take two seconds to look it up.
- This also like stems from education though too,
because I think like we can all sit here and say
it takes two seconds to look it up
and it's easy peasy lemon squeezy for us,
because we're all culturally competent,
but I think think you have these universities
that have story after story after story
of black face and cultural appropriation
and the deans excuse it,
so it's kind of like,
well if the deans are excusing it,
then its okay that we can do it.
- Do you hold them accountable as much as
you hold the school accountable
because they're not holding the students accountable?
- Yeah, I mean like, everyone needs to be held accountable.
Actually a lot of schools are telling kids
to be cognizant of the fact that they could be offensive
and it's the kids that are fighting against it.
- It was a master actually, it was a faculty member
or a staff member.
- Oh it was a staff member, well that's
even worse.
- I think this just goes beyond,
like only white people doing it,
I like that it is important,
that we look deeper into this
and kind of dismantle systematic racism
and figure out ways, like
Halloween itself, just perpetuates all these stereotypes.
It's not one specific group that does it.
I think, you know, the holiday itself
- It's not just race.
- Yeah, it's not just race,
it's misogyny, it's homophobia, it's all
- Transphobia
- Transphobia, you know, islamophobia,
it all of these things.
- So a while ago, I had a friend who
dressed up as a black celebrity that he really loved.
He wore black face.
And we were going to a party
and we had a black friend of ours
who thought it was really funny,
was all about this idea, thought the costume was great.
And they talked about how, just not upset anybody,
they would not put the photos on Facebook.
Um, it still felt a little odd to me,
but they were like if no one else is seeing it
and everyone else here knows that we are not racist
and we all think the black face is funny
um then there's no harm, no foul.
The black friend of mine essentially said
don't be offended on behalf of black people,
like I'm saying, if I'm the only one here,
that sees this and I'm comfortable with it,
it should be, it should be okay.
- Okay, so.
(laughing)
- Just because you
and the fact that you are a black person
thought that it was funny,
like you have to understand that as a whole community,
that sets us back.
- I feel very mixed about this,
because like you're allowed to have your opinion,
like we're all individuals and like
Asian people, black people, like we all
don't have don't have a hive mind,
so we all don't have to think the same way about things.
- Again, both people are fine,
you can live in the same world,
but the person that's not offended
has no right to tell the other person
that they shouldn't be offended.
- Okay, even if he's the only black person at that party,
you all live in the world
and everybody else is taking that experience
and this sort of assumption that this is okay
back into the real world
and that feeds into a continuing problem.
- It seems like the next question is
then what do we do about
how they keep happening
and it seemed like you guys
were saying that you want the schools
to take more responsibility,
but at what point can the school then,
after you educate what are you going to say,
I mean that you have to approve your costume with us.
- For instance, I went to a school
and somebody had wrote the word nigger on the wall.
I think they said I wish all niggers would die
or something like that
and so instead of like specifically going
after the individual,
the school then said okay
somebody clearly thought that this was a space
in which they could say something like that,
so we're going to reevaluate the space
and we're going to create programming
to talk about these things
and to create a different kind of environment,
that we actually want to foster
so that no one ever thinks
that this is a space that they can write that kind of stuff.
- It's a tough issue that I hope we all think about.
- Yeah.
- So you all already know what to do.
Leave your comments in the comments section below.
- Be nice to each other.
- Yeah, be nice to each other.
It's the internet you guys.
Love one another, gees.
And we will see you next week.
(laughing)