On Halloween and cultural appropriation
I wrote this article after being lambasted by someone I formerly had a very civilized online friendship with, and with whom I’ve formerly spoken about other sensitive issues with before. The ire I received gave me pause. I’ve been writing and re-writing this article on and off since, trying to find the words for what I feel.
My family and I had a Halloween dinner on October 28th last year and dressed up for the occasion, as one does at a Halloween party. I wore a voodoo witch costume, the idea loosely inspired by all the troll / voodoo / blood troll stuff in World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth, with a feather and bones headdress and a voodoo doll, and bad makeup but eh I kinda suck at anything that’s not around the eye area. My boyfriend wore a whole lot of flamingo, an inside joke since we came back from a vacation in Cuba this January. My sister wore a simple Native costume, sans headdress. My father wore a priest costume (the joke? he’s atheist… and yet didn’t act like an asshole in it). My mother wore a pumpkin suit. (Pictures not shown to preserve privacy.)
No disrespect. No mocking. Just dressing up and enjoying the make-believe that Halloween has always been to me. Until I posted pictures on Instagram… Whammy.
Forgive the verbal diarrhea format this post has become. Thoughts jumble out, as they do, no matter how much I try to shape them into some sort of order…
I grew up colour-blind. Not in the physical sense of the word, but in the “I don’t see races” sense. Kids just don’t, and even now I don’t judge someone based on the colour of their skin. When I was a kid I didn’t have many friends, but I had a Haitian friend, a Ukrainian best friend, and an Arabic friend. We talked about our similarities and our differences, and what our culture and history are all about. It was civilized, curious, and fascinating.
I’ve always regarded cultural discussions in the same way. When my province was embroiled in the reasonable accommodations debacle several years back, I winced every time because the Quebecois position seemed to always come back to “do this my way and that’s that”, and yet sometimes it kind of also felt like “hey, you’re here, not X country”. I experienced a strange push and pull, even as an immigrant-friendly person. I understood both sides. I wanted to cheer both sides. But both sides would not be (and still are not) pleased. It’s sad. It’s complex. It’s painful. I don’t think there can ever be a complete resolution to this issue.
That said, do not throw White privilege into my face to condemn me for my ancestors’ (or rather my race’s — I don’t know if my actual ancestors even partook in such actions) social injustices to other cultural groups. I do not represent my ancestors, and nor do you. Unlike my ancestors, I have traveled and also lived in other countries where the dominant race was not White, and encountered other cultures that I appreciated and respected. I’m sure you have done the same.
I’m not the one who perpetrated the past social injustices engendered by “the dominant race”. In any case, Halloween is Celtic cultural appropriation to begin with. As far back as Samhain, people went from house to house in costume, usually reciting songs or verses in exchange for food. Ring a bell? Not much has changed since then. No one is stopping non-Celts from participating in the festivities… Reduce, reuse, recycle…
You’ve read this far. You’d probably think I’m a native English speaker if my name wasn’t printed above this article, right? My grammar, sentence structure, and spelling are excellent. A French-sounding name isn’t indicative of Frenchness. After all, thousands of Americans have French surnames due to the “melting pot” that North America has more or less become. You’d be wrong in this case, though. I am a French Canadian.
I am of mostly French and some Native ancestry (my families’ genealogy books do not go far beyond the 1700s, so for example I know my mom’s first Canadian settler ancestor came from what is today known as Île-de-France (Paris area I think?) and my dad’s from Normandy, but further ancestry is totally muddled beyond that), which means I technically have less “right” to celebrate Halloween than Celt descendants. How’s that for a whopper. I’ve never seen the Irish or Scottish ban the rest of us from celebrating modern-day Samhain, however.
Dressing up as a witch is fair game, yet women were tortured, drowned, burnt, dismembered and otherwise persecuted for centuries for the sin of being “different”. Technically, dressing up as a witch could be considered an offense to poor unjustly executed women, yet I’ve never seen outcry.
Dressing up as a ghost is fair game, yet technically dressing up as a dead person could be considered offensive. After all, they’re spirits trapped in limbo.
Dressing up as a vampire is fair game, yet essentially pastiches a real historical figure, Vlad the Impaler, who definitely wasn’t a creature of fantasy.
Dressing up as a mummy is fair game, yet technically you’re dressing up as a dead pharaoh and whoa, that’s kinda appropriating an ancient civilization.
You see what I’m getting at? Even some fair-game costumes could be considered offensive, and yet they’re not.
Was I asked where my sister got her Native costume from? No, of course not. She got it from a First Nations seamstress who made it for her with her blessings. Moana costumes are decried as big no-no’s, yet its actress condones it with her blessing, for children and adults alike. The girl who wore a cheongsam for prom this summer got walloped in the news, and yet Chinese continentals were fine with it.
I asked Mexican immigrants whether someone wearing a mariachi costume, complete with sombrero, offends them. That’s a nope (“that’s not only who we are”). I asked Koreans (when I lived in Korea) whether someone wearing a hanbok for Halloween offends them. Also nope (they love it). I showed up to work today with a voodoo doll and a Black co-worker was not offended.
I think the cultural appropriation mob has gone too far. You are not your culture. I am not a whore (Fille du Roy), a “coureur des bois” or a lumberjack, although I love my heritage. And again, don’t throw White privilege in my face. French Canadians are a minority group in the country we helped found (Quebec was one of the first four Confederate provinces), and have historically been subordinated, ridiculed, ignored and attempts of assimilation were more or less successful… Successful I suppose in my case, since I more or less view myself as an anglophone nowadays. Shucks.
“The PQ and the Bloc express the grievances of many French Canadians who feel they are in a subordinate position in the country they helped found. Outside Quebec, many French-speakers feel marginalized, ignored and under pressure to assimilate into English Canadian culture. Within Quebec, many see independence from Canada as the culmination of more than 200 years of resistance to the British conquest of French Canada between 1759 and 1763. After this conquest, attempts were made to assimilate the French. They were forced to swear allegiance to the Crown; British authorities refused to recognize the Roman Catholic religion; and French administrative structures were eliminated.” (minorityrights.org)
(On the note of religion: we now see religious neutrality and secularism as a key element of our province’s political culture. Until the 60s, the Roman Catholic Church held much sway in Quebec: schools, hospitals and politics were essentially run by the Church, and the era known as the Grande noirceur shed light on just how chillingly corrupted this Church had become in order to run our lives the way they saw fit (see: Duplessis Orphans). My parents are from the Quiet Revolution era (60s), which saw the Church progressively pushed back from its elite role in political, educational and medical life (those areas are now completely secularized, but my parents still attended school with nuns and priests teaching them). Nowadays religious attendance is at its all-time low among French Quebeckers, due in part to the sheer amount of horrific stories that have come to light since then, here and outside of the province. This I hope makes you understand my father’s somewhat ironic wearing of the cassock: mocking himself as an atheist wearing the garb, not the priestly profession itself.)
For a time during the American Civil War, there was a reprieve on despicable anti-French policies in order to cajole the continental French into aiding against the American rebels, yet when that war ended, things went back to “normal” for French Canadians. Discontent prompted a bloody rebellion, which ended with rebel leaders publicly executed. Defeated, we were pretty much assimilated and, to this day, there is still a very public silent war within the province of Quebec. Quebeckers are resentful. Our history is steeped with repression and dismissal. To tell me that my Whiteness cannot begin to make me understand cultural discrimination is laughable and incredibly dismissive. (And what of Jews? What of Ukrainians? What of, what of, what of… coloured skin or not, I think discrimination has no colour, and that every peoples has experienced discrimination). Do not lessen any culture’s history of discrimination. Discrimination is all abhorrent.
The fact that I am writing this today in English is ironic and I suppose Quebec’s language police would deem me a lost cause of assimilation, of “forgetting my past”. But again, it is not my past. My cultural experience is growing up in the West Island of Montreal, in a mostly positive melting pot of multiculturalism. There is some tension, and not just between anglophones and francophones, but being bigger than it makes you interested in what’s beyond this shit. I did not personally experience the same treatment my forbears did. I do not diminish it, but it is not entirely who I am today. To say it is, is to remain stuck in the past and blame other people who are not their forbears.
Throwing my Whiteness in my face is to completely disregard the fact that my own culture is increasingly eroded within my supposed majority group, a situation I sometimes think I’m contributing to, until I realize I don’t want to live in a world where I can’t travel and speak to as many people as I can. Despite still difficult French-English relations within Quebec and also Canada, I am bilingual because I believe we (my culture and my people) can’t stay steeped in the past. We can’t blindly hate. Culture is meant to evolve, in fact culture is meant to borrow, internalize and repurpose (reduce, reuse, recycle).
I love my Buddhist bracelets. I love my silly kyeopta Korean socks. I love my sea-green hair. I love my blue feather earrings I wear for special occasions. To hear some people think, I shouldn’t be allowed to wear any of that, because I am borrowing from other cultures. Whatever happened to we become who we are from our experiences?
Tension is not the answer. Communication and an open mind are key. Multiculturalism as well as cultural curiosity and enthusiasm will win the day.
Wearing a Native American costume can offend some Aboriginals. For hundreds of years, Natives were violated, fetishized, forcefully converted, their very identity dismissed out of them. It is shameful and disgusting. I do not deny them the right to be offended by a Native American Halloween costume. They have the right to feel angry that someone is appropriating their identity that they are working hard to retain after hundreds of years of repression. Granted. Go ahead and feel offended at me and mine for wearing a Native American costume. Tell us you don’t like it, but do not splain at us virulently without also hearing our love and respect.
I’ve been to ancient First Nations villages, I’ve been to pow-wows, I sampled food and admired the art. My mother bought a giant dreamcatcher that hangs proudly from my parents’ mantle years ago because she wants to acknowledge that the “Savages” written in our genealogy in a way that does not forget them. Their actual names are lost, but not their attempted memory.
I’ve been to Korean villages and temples, I’ve attended a temple ceremony, I fucking miss the food, learned to read hangul (speaking’s another story), and admire their culture. I purchased Buddhist bracelets at every temple I visited (there and in Thailand, Japan, and more), because I admired the craft and enjoyed the inner peace I experienced at said temples. My experiences shaped who I am today. Asians who have curiously asked me why I wear them as a non-Buddhist (though as an agnostic I like many spiritual aspects of Buddhism) were understanding of my reasons.
Outright banning people from wearing a representation of cultural garb is also dismissing the very possibility that these people do understand your plight, they do understand your history, and yet want to show their love for it.
Do not attack. Do not insult. Do not shame. Be prepared to listen! What are the reasons people decide to wear such clothing as a Halloween costume? You might learn they respect your culture. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, or did that get lost in the ether a few years ago?
Is someone mocking your culture, or appreciating it? There lies the difference, in my opinion, between whether the costume is appropriate or not for Halloween. I understand the other side of the debate, but I do not personally believe a Halloween costume itself is harmful. It is the intent that can be.
What are your thoughts on this thorny subject?
