another halloween, another year of white folks being racist. while local party stores sell goblin, super hero, and witch costumes galore, there are white folks among us who bypassed these non-offensive options and landed square in the body paint isle.
first, the thing about black people is we’re people. this little known fact means face paint isn’t necessary to portray us. even as a white person, people would still know you were a rapper or football player if your face wasn’t painted brown.
instead of my typical lesson on the racist history of blackface, including minstrel shows, i’ll keep it simple. if your halloween costume involved pretending to be a person of color and you accentuated it with brown face paint, then you’re racist. no qualifiers are necessary or applicable.
more disturbing than the typical racist foolery that occurs on halloween are the people who dressed as ray rice, the nfl player who knocked his wife unconscious in a las vegas elevator. of course, this costume was incomplete without women or baby dolls as props to represent his battered wife, janay. this is so obviously offensive until i’m annoyed by the need to address it, but i will: if your halloween costume involved depicting one of the most violent domestic violence scenarios people have witnessed another couple experience, then you’re a misogynist (and racist if it involved face paint). no qualifiers are necessary or applicable.
if black folks and women ever questioned how the majority views us in this society, just wait until october 31st for the truth to be revealed. halloween is a celebration of this country’s racist and misogynistic underpinnings.
