Halloween Costume Shopping: A sampling of the racism for sale

"Sexy Indian Adult Costume"

After my open letter yesterday, I feel like some people still aren't getting it (maybe it was the 100+ comments telling me to eff off?). Despite my appeals to emotion and greater human decency, it seems that many people in the world of thar' intranets need some more physical reminders as to why dressing like a Native person this Halloween might be a problem. So I, dear random-probably-racist-internet-not-friend, am happy to oblige. Because, as a person of color, that's my job, right? To prove to you that racism exists? To teach you why these things are wrong? To offer evidence of such wrong-doings? What fun it must be to never have to worry about such things! What a privilege!

To state my case, I wandered to the Spirit Halloween website. I did a simple one word search: Indian. I got 56 results, all Native-themed. I chose a few at random to share with you below. Hooray!

To start off,  I give you the description for that "Sexy Indian" above:

Hey cowboy - get a look at this Indian! Stop him in his tracks in this sexy Indian Dream Catcher adult costume and all your dreams will come true. There's no need for a bow and arrow - just shoot him sexy looks and he'll make tracks in your direction - it might get so hot he'll put out smoke signals!

Awesome. Cowboy/Indian stereotypes, mentions of dream catchers, bows and arrows, and smoke signals! But it gets better (worse?):

 "Tribal Trouble Indian"

Put the wow back in pow-wow when you go native in this very sexy Tribal Trouble Indian adult women's costume. They may need to break out the peace pipe because the other squaws will want to torch your teepee when their menfolk see you in this foxy costume! 

"The other squaws will want to torch your teepee?" That's....great.

But the "menfolk" are included in the fun too:

 "Indian Brave Adult Men's Costume"

Go native American in this classic adult men's Indian Brave costume. Your job - to hunt. Hunt for prey like food and beer or pretty women in this comfortable costume. Get what you want then lay back and enjoy - pass the peace pipe!

Glad women are equated with food and beer. Glad the costume is "comfortable" too. God forbid you be "uncomfortable" when you're being an ignorant misogynist! And I won't even with the peace pipe comment.

and don't forget the teens and tweens...they want to bring boys back to their tipi's too!

"Indian Princess Tween Costume"

You are an Indian Princess, able to hunt, gather and lead. In this cute Indian Princess tween costume it will be a snap to gather and lead the boys back to your tipi! Dance to celebrate the harvest or welcome a full moon in this fun costume trimmed with lots of fringe, feathers and more.

I'm sure every parent wants their daughter to be gathering boys and leading them back to the tipi. but only while they're mocking Indian spirituality by "dancing to celebrate the harvest," of course.

and saving the worst for last:

 "Pocahottie Adult Women's Costume"

Girl, you won't be sitting around the campfire stringing beads in this Pocahottie Pow Wow costume! The work is done and it's time to play cowboys and Indians, only this time the Indian picks off the cowboys that she wants. Put the wow in pow wow and practice some native American rituals in this sexy Pocahottie costume. Is that an ear of corn in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

Yeah...I can't.

I hope these can serve as examples as to why I'm so pissed off. The dripping misogyny and stereotyping is so blatant, it almost reads like satire. But these are real products, for sale on websites and in thousands of Spirit stores nationwide. Thousands of people are seeing, reading and internalizing these messages.

These costumes are hurtful and dangerous because they present a false and stereotyped image of Native people. The public sees these images, and it erases our current existence, so the larger, contemporary issues in Indian Country then cease to exist as well. When everyone only thinks Indians are fantasy characters put in the same category as pirates, princesses, and cartoon characters, it erases our humanity. Have fun thinking through that one.

But let's be real for a minute. Can you seriously read those descriptions and still say that this is totes ok? Really. Be honest with yourself. Read them again. Think about if these descriptions were describing you and your family. Then tell me I'm being "over-sensitive."

Thanks for playing, and have a happy, healthy, racism-free Halloween!

Earlier:
Open Letter to the PocaHotties and Indian Warriors This Halloween
But Why Can't I Wear a Hipster Headdress?
Nudie Neon Indians and the Sexualiztion of Indian Women
A Cowboys and Indians Party is just as bad as a Blackface Party
Paris Hilton as a Sexy Indian: The Halloween Fallout Begins (includes lots of links about the costume issue)
Mid-Week Motivation: I am not your costume

Cal's "Affirmative Action Bake Sale": I want my free cookies.

Yesterday, UC Berkeley's College Republicans Chapter decided to have an "Affirmative Action Bakesale" to protest a new bill that has been introduced into the CA legistlature that would reverse parts of Prop 209, which in 1996 banned the use of race as a factor in admissions decisions in the UC system.

The premise of the bake sale is not new, and has definitely been used on other college campuses. The basic idea is that there is different pricing for different racial groups, as follows:

White: $2.00
Asian: $1.50
Latino: $1.00
Black: $.75
Native American: $.25
$.25 discount for women

The pricing implies that standards are lower for non-whites and women, and that the (poor, innocent!) White males are just royally screwed by the whole system. But you know what I see from that pricing? I GET FREE SNACKS. (I joke, I joke)

I'll let the illustrious Tim Wise breakdown why this is so stupid (as if you needed an explanation):

Tim Wise, author of the book "White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son," calls the bake sale a "sarcastic and rather smarmy slap at people of color."
"There are a lot of ways to make a point about your disagreement with affirmative action,"

"I get the joke," he continued. "How very original. It's been done for 15 years. The point that I think needs to be made ... is that by the time anyone steps on a college campus ... there has already been 12- to 13-years of institutionalized affirmative action for white folks, that is to say, racially embedded inequality, which has benefited those of us who are white. And it's only at the point of college admissions that these folks seem to get concerned with color consciousness."

So we're clear why this was a silly publicity stunt. But what about those girls in the picture above wearing headdresses? They decided to be "cute" and pretend to be Native American women and get free cookies.

You can hear from them in their own words at this video here. But the gist of what they say is:

"This bake sale trivializes the issue of affirmative action, so we thought to show our opinion of the bake sale, we would trivialize their opinion."

Um, that doesn't even make sense. At all. In the words of my friend Kayla (a Native UC Berkeley student):

Even if anti-bake sale, [this] makes no sense to me, since the next logical step ought to have been "maybe we ought not to trivialize Native American (women) with stereotypical headdresses"

Amen.  Basically this whole thing was a big mess, and got far more attention than it deserved. There were several counter-protests, and even a table selling "Magical Costco Muffins" with different prices for Muggles and Wizards, but the bottom line is that, clearly, the College Republicans of UC Berkeley have no grasp of historical context, current systems of institutional racism and inequality, or their own blinding privilege.

(Thanks MK, Kayla, Caroline, and Olga!)

A "Cowboys and Indians" party is just as bad as a blackface party.

Sociological Images, one of my favorite blogs and a large inspiration for this here bloggy blog, keeps a running post of "race themed" parties on college campuses. Recently, they re-posted it because there was a big bruhaha in Canada over some boys and girls completely painting themselves black to "honor" a Jamaican sprinter, which you can see in the picture above.

 Visceral reaction, right? We all instantly cringe, and shake our heads, wondering, "what the eff were they thinking?!" Blackface, in our society, is an ultimate taboo. We know it's wrong, though most folks probably can't verbalize why other than to shout "THAT'S RACIST!"--More on that in a minute.

In addition to several examples of blackface at campus parties, SocImages also has some examples of students dressing up as stereotypical "Mexicans," that I'm sure we all can agree are equally offensive:

As I scrolled down the list, however, I couldn't help but think, "Wait, where are the Cowboy and Indians parties?"

Let's look at some examples, all pulled from the first page of a google images search for "Cowboys and Indians Party." These were not hard to find. Most were posted with pride--"look at my sweet-a** costume, bro!" They can't be found on the websites of CNN or even the local newspaper. There were no bloggers calling for public apologies. In our society, this practice, completely akin to the images above, is accepted, condoned, and normal:

From the poster: "My friend Adam had a Cowboys & Indians themed party on Saturday night. Buddy and I picked up some stuff from Party City and a fabric store and made some pretty sweet Indian gear. The party was a lot of fun and there are more pics up on facebook if you’re interested."

(source)

Caption: "7:40 p.m. There were cowboys and Indians everywhere…"

 (source)

 

 This girl even made a nice collage for us! (/sarcasm)

"The Lambda Chi's had a cowboy & indian party last night. I had so much fun."

 (source)

And then my personal favorite...

Which, irony of all ironies, comes from a photo gallery of folks in the peace corps, in Zambia.

So, why is it, that we as a society have deemed it "totes ok" to dress up in redface, but not blackface, or brownface? The explanation is long, and the practice of playing Indian goes all the way back to the Boston Tea Party, where the colonists dressed up as Indians without the benefit of PBR or ironic mustaches. 

According to Philip Deloria, who literally wrote the book on Playing Indian, the colonists used the racial drag as a way to assert their individuality and differentiate themselves from the British, creating a new "American" identity in the process:

"There is this simultaneous embracing of Indians, which allows Americansto  make claims of American identity. But at the same time, in orderto make a  real physical nation, they have to dispossess those Indians"

This led to policies of Indian removal in the 1830's, and the attempts to physically erase and assimilate Indigenous peoples. For "Americans" to lay claim to "their" nation, they had to get rid of the original inhabitants of "their land'. Throughout US history, donning redface has shifted and symbolized any number of movements, from rebellion to peace activism. But "real" Indians are always left out of the narrative. Americans are far too obsessed with their commodified and imagined images of "the Indian" to be concerned with true authenticity.

So how does this compare with blackface? In the words of scholar Kimberly Tallbear, "Black and White became a race binary, while White appropriated Red."

Scholars and historians argue that blackface was about creating a white identity that existed in contrast to Black slaves, and asserting power over Black Americans by relegating blackness to defined, extremely stereotypical character tropes. This was done through minstral shows, where whites painted their faces with black paint to perform.

Blackface was about creating an identity in opposition (a binary of Black vs White), while playing Indian was about absorbing "Indianness" into a national identity and narrative.

However, playing Indian still relegates Native peoples to stereotypical character tropes. The images above show one "image" of an Indian--the feathers, the fringe, the warpaint, the braids. Indians are sexy maidens, fierce warriors, peace-loving environmentalists, all holding up their hand to say "How." These characters were solidified through early cinema, where Westerns all seemed to include the helpless Indian maiden and the evil Indian warrior--all played by non-Native actors, of course--and continue through to today (see: oh, every post on this blog).

So, it's clear there are large similarities between blackface and playing Indian--both are intentional acts that draw upon stereotypes and a racist history to enact whiteness--but our Nation has created a narrative in which blackface=racist, while redface=normal.

Does that make it ok to play Indian or host a cowboys and Indians theme party? Absolutely not. It just goes to show how deeply the erasure of Native peoples runs. Just because our national narrative and history has somehow normalized the phenomenon does not excuse its roots in the process of systematic erasure of the First Peoples from our homelands.

Bottom line: Blackface=dressing up in a stereotypical costume of a race that is not your own, drawing upon a history of racism and inequality. Playing Indian=dressing up in a stereotypical costume of a race that is not your own, drawing upon a history of racism and inequality. Clear enough for you?

Sociological Images: Race-Themed Events at Colleges 
Native News Online: Philip Deloria on Playing Indian
Wikipedia: Blackface
Theodore Allen: On Roediger's "Wages of Whiteness" 

Earlier:
But Why Can't I Wear a Hipster Headdress?
Harvard's Conquistabros and Navajo's theme party
Playing Indian at Stanford Powwow
When Non-Native Participation in Powwows Goes Terribly Wrong


Editorial Note: I know I've extremely over-simplified a lot of this, and I don't purport to be an expert in the history of blackface or playing Indian, so please, feel free to disagree or point to other resources in the comments!

Katy Perry at Coachella: "A sight for Squaw Eyes"

I thought this one deserved its own post outside of the hipster headdresses. Observe the outright ignorant racism of The Sun in the UK:

(original post: here)

Notice 4 things:

1. The headline: Katy's "Poca face"?

2. The text: "Katy Perry looks a sight for squaw eyes"? and she could have "doubled for Pocahontas"?

3. Her pose: please tell me she's acting demure and not war-whooping?

4. The photo caption: "How girl"?

The Sun managed to wrap four of the most egregious and horrible stereotypes into one little post. So, first of all, of course there's the mention of Pocahontas, the only female Indian that anyone seems to know. Then, the use of the absolutely demeaning and offensive word "squaw" (read this article if you want/need more background on the term). Then, her pose, doing the stereotypical war whoop that is characteristic of almost any bad western movie or any non-Native attempting to do an "Indian dance". Finally, the caption. Because we all know that every Native in the US greets each other with a solemn face and says "How." Sigh. This is just a mess.

Can we play a little imagination game and think of this with Katy in an African-inspired dress? would that fly at all?

Here's the article: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/2937413/Katys-wearing-her-Poca-face.html

(Thanks Lisa!)

You too can own your very own Tommy Tomahawk!

 For the low price of $699.99 (It's on sale!). The description:

This Indian Brave Mascot Costume gives a boost to your school spirit.  Shindigz is your place to find the fiercest and most affordable mascot costumes.

Fierce AND affordable. 

http://www.shindigz.com/party/Indian-Mascot.cfm

(Thanks Scott!)

Stilwell High School's New Mascot

(image via www.cherokeephoenix.org)

I receive the Cherokee Phoenix (the Cherokee Nation newspaper) weekly by email, and today opened my inbox to this article about Stilwell HS (located in Stilwell, OK) and their new mascot, Tommy Tomahawk. Stilwell High School's student population is 70% Native, the vast majority of whom are Cherokee. The Phoenix article is addressing the controversy surrounding Tommy's unveiling, and it seems the school "didn't intend to offend anyone" (duh):

“It was done strictly to create school spirit because they’re proud of their Indian heritage,” Fletcher said. “Primarily, it was something the kids got after and promoted. Even our Indian heritage club was part of (the) promotion of that and donated funds for that.”

That (alarming and maddening) statement from a school official reminded me of this great cartoon that manages to capture so much:

(image via http://www.bluecorncomics.com/stharm.htm)

Though the school (and, apparently some of the students) consider the new mascot honorable, many of us would beg to differ, including some of the Cherokee Nation citizens:

CN citizen and Stilwell alumna Melanie Knight said she was disappointed the school would create a mascot that is a caricature and warped image of American Indians.

“It has been difficult to address long-term mascots that have become part of some schools’ history and legacy,” she said. “This is an opportunity to prevent that from happening. Tommy Tomahawk and his personification clearly says to me that Indians are a joke.”

The mascot follows the pattern of most other Indian mascots--his clothing reflects a "plains" style, though not a correct representation of any tribal dress, he has the stereotypical long braids and face paint, and, of course, he is styled to look menacing.

I won't get into the meat of the mascot issue here, but there are some strong faq, articles and analysis that you can read here:

http://aistm.org/fr.faqs.htm

http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/09/22/some-native-american-sports-mascots/

http://www.bluecorncomics.com/mascots.htm

The bottom line is, how can you look at that mascot and not think it is dehumanizing and racist? Especially if the school was attempting to "honor" the Native students?

Also, for reference, Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chad Smith in traditional clothing:

(image via http://www.berrybeadwork.com/)

Stilwell High School's Indian Mascot Causes Stir: http://www.cherokeephoenix.org/21050/Article.aspx