If you’re planning to dress up for Halloween on a college campus this year, you need to take extra special care to make sure you won’t offend anyone. Otherwise you might find yourself in front of a firing sq — er, maybe just getting ratted out to campus administrators.
The University of Massachusetts-Amherst is trying to pre-empt hurt feelings and cries of “cultural appropriation” by plastering dorms with messages informing students about the dangers of Halloween costumes.
One display, highlighted by Campus Reform, features fliers that read “Don’t be an a**hole” and includes a flowchart to help students determine whether their costume is offensive. The main question on this flowchart is whether the person (or idea) someone is dressing up as is the same race as the costume’s wearer.
The flowchart is called the Simple Costume Racism Evaluation and Assessment Meter, or SCREAM, because Halloween, and it features a “threat level” of varying colors to signify how offensive one’s costume will be.
There are only two ways to get a “low” or “green” level. 1) Dress up as someone from your own race (though I’m guessing the college wouldn’t punish a black student who wanted to go as, say, Luke Skywalker), or 2) Dress up as a “thing/idea” that does not rely on “an awareness of controversial current events or historically accepted cliches?” No examples are given.
If you answer wrong on any question, your threat level increases, up to “severe.”
Other displays on “cultural appropriation” contradict one another. One flyer says that “cultural appropriation is an act of privilege, and leads to offensive, inaccurate, and stereotypical portrayals of other people’s culture.” Another flyer states that “culture is fluid” and contains a quote from author Susan Scafidi, who wrote a book titled Who Owns Culture?: Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law.
“It’s not fair to ask any culture to freeze itself in time and live as though they were a museum diorama,” the Scafidi quote says. “Cultural appropriation can sometimes be the savior of a cultural product that has faded away.”
Still other displays suggest that “Hypersexualized racism … is still racism,” and features photos of models in “sexy Indian” costumes.
The saddest thing about this is that in order to accuse a student of cultural appropriation, one must reduce them to the color of their skin. This could certainly result in a student with light skin being deemed racist for wearing an Indian costume or sombrero, even if that student does have culturally appropriate roots. The whole “fight” against cultural appropriation is essentially telling people not to delineate at all from their own heritage, which is exclusionary. Maybe even racist.
Social justice warriors will be out in full force this year, and the aim will most certainly be toward finding white students to call racist.
Now, aren’t you excited to go out and celebrate Halloween?
Ashe Schow is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
