@runswimyoga, surely, you jest. You cannot possibly be comparing someone dressing up as a lumberjack to, say, a white person dressing in blackface. Most of those of us who are white have NO idea what people of color go through on an almost daily basis (and sometimes, on a daily basis) in terms of racist stuff happening. It is really easy to say that people need to get over it when you personally aren’t encountering the things they encounter frequently. I am the white parent of a kid of color (adopted) and let me tell you, her experiences the first year of college were eye-opening. Some included rotten/ignorant things said to her directly, or in her hearing, and others involved stuff said (such as the “N” word) to her boyfriend, and some included incidents on campus involving scrawled swastikas and KKKs on kid’s dorm whiteboards, etc. She was warned that she might not be welcome at some frats because she isn’t white, etc.
Can’t speak for @runswimyoga, but I read that lumberjack post as very tongue in cheek.
Yes, me, too, but it sounded to me as if she/he was saying that any costume could potentially offend anyone. I don’t think that is fair as a commentary on how Black people feel when they see a white person dressed up as a rapper, etc. in blackface complete with makeup.
“Can upper middle class black people dress up as gangsters if they want to?”
Uhhh, Italian? That’s the group the media impresses upon me to have engaged in, and now celebrate, the gangster life."
Yet the Sopranos was allowed to exist on TV for many years. And the Jersey Shore, too.
Just visited the mob museum in Vegas. Lots of costume idea from there. Most require fake blood.
Blackface was explicitly used to mock black people. Are all H costumes being created explicitly to mock?
I don’t know how I feel about this kind of thing, obviously I would hope that kids going to a place like Yale would at least have understanding about how others feel and try to be understanding, but I also am not entirely happy about rules being used to enforce it, either. I can understand why someone would be offended, get upset, why someone who is Jewish, for example, would get offended at someone dressing up in a costume that depicted Jews as they often have been caractitured throughout history, or someone who is Muslim who might be offended at someone dressing up in “arab” garb with a bomb strapped around their waist, and so forth, and especially for people who have been marginalized, it can be a very sensitive point.
It also depends on someone’s background, I can remember the hooplah back in the 1970’s when the Godfather came out, about its depictions of the Mafia and then later on when it got on tv for the first time, how they had all these disclaimers. and I didn’t understand it, even though my background is Italian. Likewise when the Columbus day parade organizers refused to allow the cast members of The Sopranoes be in it, talking about the negative image the show gave Italians, I didn’t really understand it, to me both represent very real segments of the population, people like Tony Soprano and Michael Cordeleone existed, but I never experienced any kind of repurcussion from that kind of thing, I never had anyone assume I was somehow a gaffone or a mob member, it just was never a big deal. Likewise, I could see where some people of Native American extraction might not particularly get offended at something like the Redskins or the idiotic Tomahawk chop they do at Braves games, if they themselves didn’t feel like they ever had cause to believe they were treated badly for being Native American.
As far as safe space goes, it kind of flows from what I am talking about. The idea of safe space is to be a place where someone can expect not to have to face the kind of things that go on elsewhere in society, a place where they can know that they won’t be denigrated or will be shown respect. It has been used a variety of ways, in a support group or a group therapy session, it is knowing that you can express feelings and emotions and not be attacked, because the moderators won’t allow it. If you are a gay kid someplace where being gay is not particularly safe, it is a place where they don’t have to worry about someone judging them or shoving a bible in their face and telling them they are going to hell, or worse. It is very hard to explain to people who haven’t been there, that when you live under in effect a siege mentality to have place or places like that is huge. If you are someone who otherwise fits into society, are another face in the crowd, where you haven’t lived with constantly being afraid of who or what you are, what others will think or worse do, it is hard to understand.
There is also a fine line with all of this on where do you draw the line? There was something like this recently, where schools dropped Halloween festivities claiming ‘cultural sensitivity’ (which is a euphemism, 99% of this comes from fundamentalist Christians who claim Halloween is devil worship and such and claiming sensitivity to their beliefs is stretching the idea of things a bit, it is basically claiming their beliefs are above all others), or the idiocy of schools at their music performances banning any music, including instrumental, that had anything to do with religion, it is going overboard.
The problem with letting the students self censor it (and I am very much a fan of what Brandeis said, that the answer to ‘bad speech’ is not banning speech, it is ‘good speech’ that drowns out the bad) is there also are issues like campus safety, where for example an offensive costume turns into a brawl. If you have a bunch of clueless yahoos, let’s say your campus version of Animal House, who think it is funny to dress in blackface, and they are confronted for doing so, it could turn ugly, into a violent situation (and folks, before telling me that won’t happen, it does and has, I was involved in disciplinary hearings in college over things like this, it involved both the offenders and those offended usually). Letting kids, even on a college campus, ‘work it out’ can turn ugly, in some ways it is similar to those whose answer about bullying is school is let the kids work it out, that is how it worked when I went to school…
My answer on something like this would be not to ban offensive costumes, but rather use the bully pulpit through media and social networking and the student paper and so forth, to remind people when doing costumes to think about how others might thing, that what is funny to you may not be so funny to someone else. And if an incident does happen, then use it as a teaching opportunity, try through the same kind of sources to make the offender understand why the offended person reacted as they did. The problem with rigid rules, of trying to censor out what is offensive, is where is that line? Back in the 1990’s, when there was the so called Child Protection Act, that would de facto lead to censoring of the internet in the US, it was supposed to be about child porn, but there were those who as part of this were putting in language that would have banned things “offensive” , like for example banning references to being gay or lesbian that claimed it was natural or was otherwise supporting…so whose offense do we cater too? The answer is generally where for example the speech or action goes beyond offensive, to where it is harassing or threatening, such as the case of burning a cross on someone’s lawn or even burning a cross itself, because it has the intent of harrassing or threatening someone. The argument for banning an offensive costume would be in the argument that if a school allowed offensive costumes, it is in effect the school supporting the beliefs behind those costumers, that it would give let’s say a black student the idea that the school, if it allowed black face costumes, was also supporting the racism behind it and they would not feel safe at the school. While I understand the reasoning, it comes back to the idea that some things are going to be offensive to someone, and where do you draw the line? Is a few people’s reaction to something legitimate enough reason to ban it? It is hard, it is difficult, and my answer is that without clear proof of harm things should side on the idea of free expression, even if repugnant because it is so hard.
This phenomenon is something that’s very interesting to me. The status of Jews in the “progressive” handbook’s taxonomy has changed dramatically over my lifetime; on U.S. campuses they’ve clearly gone from “oppressed status” to “oppressor status”. Globally, the change has been even more dramatic.
If this keeps up, then in another 50 years I think it’s entirely possible that another horrible cataclysm might happen. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
@Pizzagirl: That would be my point (about celebrating).
Blackface was at best for mocking – sometimes (as in Birth of a Nation) it was for genocidal propaganda.
I’m with Hunt, as usual. This isn’t even a disagreement about what costumes are OK. It’s a disagreement about the role of the university in policing the costumes. The master’s email was civil and measured. If she’s wrong, say that she’s wrong. I think she’s wrong myself! But if you’re calling for heads to roll, then you’re not being reasonable.
@TheGFG I only highlight some of the almost innumerable afflictions that the US has placed upon our native communities. To be certain, whole academic volumes have been dedicated to this topic. Make no mistake about it, these are not just some academic PC platitude that I am placing forward, consider the various names of US public policy and their corresponding periods of the last 100 years: assimilation period, reorganization period, the termination period. Do these sound like the period of enlightenment to you?
Let me give you a modern example, during the termination period, the US Govt, terminated the Klamath tribes. Do you know why? During this period of the 1950s, hydro-electric power was all the rage, but they could not get permission from my western land owners (e.g. white ranchers) so, they identified the Klamath tribe who had delineated treaty water rights in the entire Klamath basin, but also were very poor. The US, and now remember this is not a Lewis and Clark period land rush, but in the mid-50s, made a calculated move that they could not legally defend themselves, and they terminated the tribe for the specific purposes of claiming their water rights—despite that almost 90% of the tribe still lived on tribal lands. It was not until 1986, that specific congressional legislation corrected this grave action.
As to you specific question, one need only look at the unemployment rates for tribes in the area, that commonly exceed 70-80%, yes, 70-80%, see http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2013/08/29/danger-zone-15-tribes-unemployment-rates-over-80-percent-151078 Or the rates exorbitant rates of sexual assault, in some reservations, they exceed over 50% of the female population, see: https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/userfiles/file/Violence%20Against%20AI%20AN%20Women%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf Or the at least 4000 deaths of native children at Indian Schools to our brethren in First Nation-see: https://www.futureswithoutviolence.org/userfiles/file/Violence%20Against%20AI%20AN%20Women%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf
So, I ask you an additional time, don’t you think she (Emily) has some semblance of legitimacy to posit these questions??
Mocking, ridiculing, belittling, dehumanizing, dismissing, toying with any ideas of the similitude to beings worthy of being called human.
At best it was at its near worst.
Maybe not under the constitution, but many would reasonably argue that being treated as “the other” creates a hostile environment antithetical towards creating a conducive safe environment for students trying to pursue an education and being a part of a given campus culture/life.
This very issue is one reason why several URM working-class classmates in HS and undergrad and even some White students who identify as progressives either regretted attending certain universities or vowed to avoid certain colleges/geographic regions of the country which have historically been unwelcoming/hostile to their racial/ethnic/political orientations.
If colleges…especially the colleges with serious past historical/current issues in this regard want to claim they welcome all groups including marginalized ones…they can’t make the claim PG is making without coming across as tone-deaf and effectively communicating the fact their claims to welcome all groups is dubious lip service.
Actually, in Warren v. District of Columbia(1981), the Supreme Court issued a ruling stating the police do not have a specific obligation to protect individual citizens as shown in a quote from the decision here:
What people must realize that its not just race and culture being considered, but I quote a much eloquent capture of some of the ancillary issues that instruct this topic.
"in his own words, from Black Jacobins: “The race question is subsidiary to the class question, and to think of imperialism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental, is an error only less grave than to make it fundamental.”
I’m with Hunt and Hanna. Except when Hanna says, “This is a disagreement about the role of the university in policing the costumes.” That doesn’t seem to me to be the entire disagreement.
Aren’t some in this thread defending Halloween costumes other people in this thread think are not OK? My disagreement is with people in this thread (if there are such) and elsewhere who think it’s perfectly OK to dress up in costumes demeaning other ethnicities. I think the university is right in saying those costumes should not be worn, and the master was wrong in defending them, however civilly.
And some of the people defending Halloween costumes demeaning toward marginalized groups are the same ones who’d take great umbrage if someone criticizes or otherwise discusses negative behaviors/stereotypes about one group they tend to favor…pan-Hellenic Greek organizations. Organizations which have mostly historically been identified as being part and parcel of the Upper/upper-middle class WASP/White-dominated establishment. Especially ones like DKE with members like the Bush family.
And coincidentally or not, most fraternity/sorority groups in the news for such issues seem to have serious past and possibly current issues with negative attitudes/behaviors towards minority groups.
@Cardinal Fang - The master’s wife was not defending people wearing offensive costumes. She was saying that students should be able police that issue themselves and not have the administration get involved to the extent that they did.
The challenge comes in defining what “those costumes” are. Christakis was saying, I think, that students should decide for themselves what costumes are acceptable and unacceptable, and should challenge directly the ones they don’t like. I don’t think that’s such a crazy suggestion, especially at Yale, where most students are actually pretty empowered, especially if they choose to act as a group. I guess I can understand that a particular student doesn’t want to have the obligation to point out all the offensive costumes directly, and would prefer to have that done by authority figures. Personally, I kind of think both the original e-mail urging students to avoid insensitive costumes, and the later one urging them to take adult responsibility, were sensible points of view on the subject, and shouldn’t really have created this level of controversy. Perhaps they wouldn’t have if there wasn’t a concurrent controversy involving a fraternity party.
@Cobrat - And there are people who do not identify as progressives who regret attending certain universities and vow to avoid certain colleges/geographic regions of the country which have historically been unwelcoming/hostile to their racial/ethnic/political orientations.
The Associate Master’s email showed a stunning lack of judgment. Why on earth was it productive for her to respond to a campus-wide email from a Dean, the Chaplain, and others that essentially said “before you decide how to exercise your right to free expression on Halloween, please think about what effect your choice might have on other members of the community” with an email suggesting that college is supposed to be a “safe space” for young people to be “obnoxious” and “offensive” and that for university officials to suggest otherwise is infantalizing and oppressive? I have some sympathy with demands for her resignation as Associaye Master. Not because I disagree with her opinion, but because I think she’s shown that she lacks the skill sets and/or temperament to be a good House Master. That role is one of defusing rather than escalating conflict and creating a space within the University where all students feel like they’re appreciated and taken seriously. Epic fail from that POV.