Costumes do poor job of masking cultural appropriation
Halloween: a time of carving pumpkins, eating caramel apples, and watching scary movies. However, costumes are by far the most exciting part: couples costumes, group costumes with friends, or maybe a costume for just the rugged individual.
During these festivities, it’s important to understand the connotation a costume may have and the cultures that may be offended. Is this costume appropriate or does it appropriate?
There's a not-so-fine line between merely dressing up for Halloween and disparaging an entire culture. There are costumes that simply shouldn’t be worn: dressing up as a “cholo/chola” if you’re not Mexican, dressing up as an “Indian” if you’re not Indigenous, dressing up as a pharaoh if you’re not North African/Egyptian, and the list goes on. A lot of white people, or the people appropriating, sometimes just don’t understand why it’s wrong.
Cultural appropriation occurs when members of a dominant culture benefit from an aspect of a marginalized culture. The dominant culture can either benefit in the form of financial capital or social capital, which would be like starting a trend or gaining status from the element being appropriated. To put it simply, the people that made those aspects, that created that culture, are denied credit.
During this time of seemingly “heightened” cultural awareness, this concept should be better understood. But for white people, this isn’t something they necessarily have to think about. It doesn’t impact their daily life; therefore, a white person’s cultural awareness often doesn’t exist. This lack of cultural awareness discredits people of color and their struggles, and white people are blinded by their own sense of entitlement.
This entitlement manifests at the rage and offense felt by the entitled for being “told what to do” when being educated on the topic. Instead of recognizing damage done by insensitivity, they claim the ‘woke crowd’ (typically, and conveniently, being people of color) is trying to “control them” or “punish them.” While this narrative may assuage fragile egos, it ignores and whitewashes the far more important truth of cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes.
All these cultures really want is to be recognized and respected. Wearing someone else’s culture as a costume not only shows a lack of such respect, but it reinforces negative connotations of harmful stereotypes that have misidentified humans for centuries.
In the time of Hailey Beiber’s “brownie glazed lips” and “spa water,” which is just aguas frescas with less flavor, and countless white celebrities wearing box braids, cultural appropriation seems to be on the rise. Costumes provide Halloween celebrants a lovely opportunity to escape their norm, but such escape should never come at the expense of another’s humanity.
by Anika Flores and Hailie Augsburgre
Published October 31, 2022
Oshkosh West Index Volume 119 Issue II