Any minute now somebody is going to start a petition on Twitter to rename Halloween “Cultural Appropriation Day”. Who knows? They probably already have. There’s no point in having a controversy these days without a petition, calls for punitive measures and a really vicious media takedown of the villain of the day (real or imagined).
I can think of lots of reasons for banning Halloween. Here are three: 1) it’s consumerism gone mad, and a fake “holiday” to boot; 2) encouraging children to eat bucketloads of sweets is crazy when there’s an obesity epidemic; 3) none of all that plastic tat is recyclable.
But no; according to the appropriation police, Halloween’s real crime is that it’s racist. When a non-Asian dresses up in a Japanese geisha costume, for example, the wearer is committing an act either of theft or of exploitation. Continue reading…