Because identity politics is spreading like wildfire not just on college campuses, but in the greater society (and here I mean the U.S. and the U.K.), we’re now faced with something that hasn’t happened in previous Halloweens: the consideration of whether costumes people wear are offensive. This can be a useful discussion to have, but it may be going overboard.

This issue isn’t that new, for it’s happened previously with theme parties at colleges, where students dressing in ethnic costumes, or even in blackface, have faced opprobrium and punishment from their universities. Here at my own school, students have fought over whether it was appropriate to dress as Mexicans (with sombreros) or as Mexican gangsters.

Clearly, all of these costumes are legal under the First Amendment (unless they’re calculated to elicit violence), but they’re not “free speech” in the way I conceive it, for they’re not making a clear statement that can be debated. So the issue comes down to whether they’re offensive, bigoted, or convey invidious stereotypes. And that raises a further issue: who makes that judgment and how many people have to be offended before it’s considered wrong.

That’s the issue discussed in an article in today’s New York Times, “Halloween costume correctness on campus: Feel free to be you, but not me.”  And here’s one example: the President of the University of Louisville had a Halloween party in which some people (including him!) dressed in sombreros and fake moustaches. Here’s the photo (the president later apologized for offending the school’s Hispanic students):

Those costumes seem over the top to me, and even though Mexicans themselves wear sombreros (think of how mariachi bands dress), it’s deemed bigoted. I’m not sure about that, but it does present a national stereotype, and to me this is borderline bad behavior. And if these people wore blackface, that’s surely not okay, even if they’re emulating a famous black person like, say, Kanye West. Such a costume simply stirs up bad feelings because, historically, blackface was used to mock blacks, and it’s best not to participate in that history.

But what about other costumes? Indian costumes, which people wore when I’m a kid, are deemed offensive because they stereotype Native Americans, but couldn’t you see it as paying homage to them, wearing the often striking clothes that the natives did? What about dressing as a geisha? That, too, is seen as bad (indeed, you can’t even wear a karate outfit), but geisha dress is simply lovely.

Sometimes I wear Indian clothes: a kurta pajama with tight white cotton pants and a long shirt (cotton or silk), and I wear them to work, to Indian music concerts, and especially in India, where the climate makes such clothing much more comfortable than Western clothes. I have never been faulted for “cultural appropriation” by Indians or anyone else, but am still I guilty of it? Where is the line? When does appreciation of a culture become mocking of a culture? Is it offensive for white people to wear dreadlocks? I can’t force myself to think that, because dreadlocks look really nice on some people who aren’t black, and they’re worn because of that. (And is it appropriation for non-Jamaican blacks to have dreadlocks?)

Ideally, in a multicultural society, cultures would take the best from other cultures, including food, dress, hair, and so on. Is that “cultural appropriation” or “cultural appreciation“?

There are many questions. If one Indian person objects to my wearing kurta pamaja, does that mean I should stop? How many people must be offended before you’re really guilty of being bigoted? And do the offended always get to decide? This is the question I’m asking readers, and a question brought up by the Times. Most people seem to think that if anyone thinks your “cultural appropriation” is inappropriate, you shouldn’t do it. I’ve just read an editorial in The Chicago Maroon, our student newspaper, which expresses that view:

This Halloween we would like to emphasize that no one’s culture is a costume. It is not one person’s place to represent another historically marginalized group through their outfit.

. . . We urge all members of the campus community to think critically about the costumes they choose to wear on Halloween, and by extension, how individual actions affect a campus climate. Not only should students choose respectful costumes, but they should also speak up if a friend opts to wear an offensive one. We all have the responsibility to speak up in the face of insensitive and inappropriate actions, and must continue to work towards a campus climate that is welcoming to all members of the community.

But what is a “respectful” versus a “disrespectful” costume? Who decides? Are Arabs “historically marginalized”, so that dressing up as a Bedouin or a Saudi Prince is disrespectful? What about the Japanese—is a samurai costume offensive? Clearly, the students themselves, immersed in an identity-politics culture, prefer to play it safe:

“If there’s a gray line, it’s always best to stay away from it,” said Mitchell Chen, 21, a microbiology major and director of diversity efforts at the Associated Students of the University of Washington. The university emailed to all students this week a six-minute video of what not to do for Halloween.

. . . Some schools advise that borrowing from any culture is demeaning and insulting unless the wearer is a part of that culture. In other words, do not put on a karate outfit with a black belt, the University of Washington advised in the video it sent to students, unless you actually earned that belt.

Here’s that six-minute video:

While I agree with much of this, including the bad taste of pretending to be a mental patient or of wearing blackface, I don’t agree with all of it. The notion that wearing aloha shirts misrepresents Pacific Island culture, for instance, I find deeply misleading. These weren’t traditional Polynesian dress (although the patterns can be traditional), and are worn by almost everyone on Hawaii now, including businessmen on Fridays. I will continue to wear mine, as they’re colorful and lovely. And really, does dressing up as a geisha stereotype all Japanese women as geishas? I don’t think so. And I think the prohibition of martial-arts costumes is an example of hypersensitivity.

I will end here, asking readers if they agree with the video and the notion that any cultural appropriation, through costumes or things like wearing dreadlocks, is wrong. My own view, which is evolving, right now agrees with the statement of John Leo:

While some costumes are clearly offensive to all, not everyone agrees where the boundaries should lie. John Leo, who edits an online magazine about higher education for the Manhattan Institute, a conservative research group, characterized some of the colleges’ guidelines as “hypersensitivity to rules.”

“If you deal directly in stereotypes, you’re bound to irritate people,” Mr. Leo said. “But a lot of what passes for appropriation is simply normal costuming for Halloween, and I think that there’s a lot of oversensitivity to it. If it doesn’t seem mean or exploitative, I don’t see what the problem is.”

Right now hypersensitivity is spreading, and it behooves us to consider how much of it is warranted, and how much is simply a way for students to claim a special identity that nobody can share.

h/t: Jon