(SATIRE) Spooky Season Gets Woke
"One can describe their costume and a verdict on whether it is culturally insensitive or not is delivered."
Author: Thomas West
In order to have a safe and culturally sensitive Halloween, MSU’s produced an online portal to address your costume’s appropriateness.
The previous weeks have begun the anticipation for the fall season’s favorite holiday: Halloween. With the MSU hayride season winding down to an end, Michigan State students are hanging up their flannels for the year and looking for that oh-so-perfect costume to impress and ultimately post on the ‘gram.
Whether it be a tried and true outfit like a ghost or frat boy, the classic sexy look, or an edgy ensemble that is the sum of hours of labor, one must remember to not only be safe, but politically correct.
To raise awareness for this subject, Michigan State University has long in advance put up posters pertaining to this issue. They ranged from flowcharts describing features on costumes that would qualify said costumes as racist to pictures removing one or two features from a costume that made them ‘racist’ or not.
Although diagrams and information slides have been posted in nearly every campus dormitory, the MSU Office of Diversity and Inclusion felt that this had not gone far enough. Employing students from the College of Engineering and the James Madison College, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion has created a system where one can describe their costume and a verdict on whether it is culturally insensitive or not is delivered with an explanation of said outcome results.
It can be accessed at this URL: msuismycostumeracist.msu.edu.
A few anodyne classics were plugged into the machine and the results were as follows:
● Ghost: racist, propagates ‘whiteness’ as a cultural norm and under represents other colors
● Football player: racist, sides with the NFL’s stance against Colin Kapernick
● Basketball player: depends, varies on cultural representation of player and costume wearer
● Sexy (anything female): sexist, objectifies women
● Sexy (anything male): sexist, mockingly objectifies women
● Monster: culturally insensitive, points out physical deformities and mocks them
● Skeleton: sexist, undertones a culture that women have to be skinny
● Police Officer: ‘Are you really asking this?’ racist, duh.
● Donald Trump: Your APID has been noted.
● Donald Trump (mockingly): haha, politically correct. Orange man bad.
MSU freshman Desi Bowden remarked, “This tool has been extremely helpful in helping me select my costume: non-gender binary student ii.”
Cole Reshad, junior studying microbiology, commented, “At least I am safe, every year I go as an amoeba.”
What we will never know is when the label will be applied to us. Remember that while physical safety is important this hallows’ eve, so is a label that can stick to you.
Take a lesson from Virginia Democrat Governor Ralph Northam and Canadian President Justin Treadeu; media standards can change and even an outfit that conforms to the politically correct standards of today can morph into a career ending apology in the future.
Contributor: Thomas West