Column: ‘I can wear whatever I want’

Halloween is fast approaching! A night filled with parties, adventures and creative transformations. It’s an overwhelming atmosphere of carefreeness from the stress of school.

In recent years, Halloween costumes have become a topic of debate for cultural appropriation and insensitivity.

Campaigns like “My Culture is not a Costume” are yearly events on college campuses throughout the nation.

Like any movement, these campaigns have drawn backlash from people who ask:

“Why can’t I just wear what I want?”

“Why are people being so sensitive?”

“Can we stop being politically correct all the time?”

These questions are ones I hear from those who are told that some costumes aren’t acceptable. For some reason, they can’t possibly fathom why a Native American would be offended by someone, particularly a white person, wearing a “dead Indian costume” or cultural headdress.

It’s almost mind boggling that a population that faced widespread genocide, displacement and forced assimilation would dare take offense when the generational offspring or physical representations of their oppressors parade around in watered-down versions of the very culture they tried to eliminate and decimate.

Maybe they’re aware of the inhumanities inflicted on Native Americans, in which case their usual response is “I didn’t do it, why must I pay for it?” or “This is America; I can wear whatever I want.” Both statements are inherently problematic for possessing a sense of entitlement, but they display different paths of rationalizations.

The first is “Why am I paying for something I didn’t do?”

Quite simply, marginalized people are still living in marginalized conditions. The attempt to detach history from contemporary realities is both careless and overwhelmingly privileged. Everyone is born into a world already shaped for them by history — we are born as agents, whether passive or active, of pre-existing systems. The descendants of these oppressive systems are still experiencing the effects, and you are still reaping the benefits.

The second is good ol’ arrogance. Those who take this path of rationalization display their lack of basic interpretive skills to identity a cause-and-effect relationship. It’s common that these sets of people just simply do not care, in which case their human empathetic processes are defunct.

Native American costumes are an example of what you shouldn’t wear (this applies to everyone, with special attention to white people). Pulling out the “my great-great-great-grandmother was Cherokee” card to justify your costume, even after knowing you shouldn’t wear it, is an indicator that you just might be a stubborn bigot. Fake dreads, blackface, Día De Los Muertos skeletons and sugar skulls, geisha or traditional Desi attires are many more examples.

In summary, if it’s someone’s culture, it’s not your costume. Try being Superman or a zombie. Trust me, you’ll live.