Mother Daughter “White Trash” Halloween Costumes Cause Stir At Elementary School

This week’s WTF classist culturally insensitive costume news comes from Detroit, where a mother and daughter donned trash bags, wrote “white trash” on the front, and wore the costumes to an elementary school “trunk or treat” event. Whether you have thought about it or not, “white trash” is an offensive term that is wrapped up in racial and classist stereotypes.

According to myfoxdetroit.com, several parents were offended.?Roseville parent Nicole Ekmeian asks:

I was a little appalled. To me, how can you dress yourself and your child in a white trash outfit?

Mom Megan Manchenko says:

Roseville is known for “white trash” and you just don’t do that at a kids function. You can’t have weapons; you can’t have blood; you can’t have gory stuff, but racial slurs? Go right ahead!

This incident is complicated by the fact that the area where this occurred has been hard hit by the recession, an area where people are likely to be labeled as “white trash.” Why this mother would embrace that stereotype is anyone’s guess.

There are already people who have commented on the original news story that this is not news and people should “get over it.” Dressing a child up as a racial and classist stereotype at a school function is bad parenting at the very least, and ye,s it’s news. The term “white trash” has a history. It has long been used to separate the “good” white people from the “bad” ones. It has even been used to distinguish who owned slaves and who didn’t.

Last week, the UC at Boulder launched it’s “We’re a Culture, Not a Costume” campaign, which addresses racial and culturally insensitive costumes. From?dailycamera.com:

Dean of Students Christina Gonzales wrote in an email to students that the CU-Boulder community has been affected by costumes that poke fun at poverty, overly sexualized cultural identities and stereotypes, such as cowboys and Indians.

As a CU Buff, making the choice to dress up as someone from another culture, either with the intention of being humorous or without the intention of being disrespectful, can lead to inaccurate and hurtful portrayals of other peoples’ cultures in the CU community,” Gonzales wrote.

Halloween is a fun holiday. It’s a time to be creative and funny. We can do that and NOT demean other people’s cultures or make fun of them. At the end of the day people should never be called trash, certainly not children, not even as a joke.

Edited/Published by: SB

 

 

Laurie Bertram Roberts is the president of Mississippi National Organization for Women, a feminist activist, full spectrum doula and writer in Jackson, MS. Her family suspected she was trouble when at age 8 she preferred reading weekly news magazines over girly magazines. Her early fascination with liberal ideals, women's rights, was not quite welcome in her conservative fundamentalist Christian home. She is incredibly passionate about reproductive justice and fighting all forms of oppression. When not speaking truth to power she is likely hanging out with her children watching sci fi or doing other nerd like things.