By Anjali Nayak
As the spookiest season gets closer and closer, you will start to see more and more Halloween stores popping up. On their shelves will be costumes such as “Arab Sheikh,” the front will be a man dressed in Middle Eastern clothing, donning a sinister mustache. Next to it will be a large catalog of “Mexican” costumes, complete with wide sombreros, ponchos, and handlebar mustaches. There are even a select few who decide to darken their skin in order to pose as having a darker tone, although the degrading and dehumanizing act of blackface deserves to be looked down upon. Of course every year, it is inevitable to find a generic “Native American” costume, containing fringe, fake suede, feathers and braids. None of these costumes are an accurate representation of their respective cultures, as well as continue to uphold untrue stereotypes. Halloween is a time for visiting haunted houses, eating candy, and watching scary movies, not an opportunity to turn an individual’s identity into a stereotyped image.
New York – based artist and performer of the Ho – Chunk, Hopi and Rappahannock tribes Henu Josephine Tarrant explains that, “We aren’t seen as modern – day people at all. That’s also what makes it really difficult for people to understand that what they’re doing is offensive.” The costumes depict such cultures as a monolithic frozen in time, rather than an evolving ever growing process.