It’s October, and costume parties are becoming more rampant in anticipation for the holiday. Dressing up for these parties is a great way to celebrate the holiday, if not one of the most longed for of the year. You can be anything you want for just a night; it’s harmless…right? Costumes are all fun and games—until they become something more sinister.
In the past week, the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity and Alpha Phi sorority at UCLA threw a costume party that was the perfect example of what not to do. The Daily Bruin reports that they “held a ‘Kanye Western’ themed raid Tuesday night, for which guests dressed in baggy clothes, plumped lips and padded bottoms, or as ‘Kardashians.’” Partygoers reportedly showed up in blackface, using African-American culture as a costume.
It’s insane that in 2015 we are still having these kinds of problems with racism and cultural appropriation, but not the least bit surprising. From Arizona State’s MLK Black Party in 2013, Penn State’s Mexican Party in 2012, to Cal Poly’s Colonial Bro’s and Nava-Hos party in 2013, this issue is nowhere near new.
The fact that these parties continue to happen is such a big deal because blackface and cultural appropriation invalidate the identity and struggles of people of color. POC don’t get to just dress up as a different color or culture for a night and then go back to living their oppression-free lives the next day. They have to live the struggle and deal with racism and prejudice every single day.
As Udova Okafor writes in The Huffington Post, “A person’s cultural identity forms one of the most important and most vulnerable parts of who they are. We tend to define ourselves by what we believe, and the way we express our beliefs is through certain symbols that are generally representative of our culture. With culture comes a sense of identity, a sense of self, and when our culture is stolen from us, there is this deep sense of loss. This is the very reason why cultural appropriation is grossly discriminatory and grossly wrong.”
This holiday, let’s keep our costumes fun and free of cultural appropriation. Let’s do Halloween right, Gauchos.