{"id":10570,"date":"2017-10-28T20:46:25","date_gmt":"2017-10-28T20:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=10570"},"modified":"2017-10-28T20:46:25","modified_gmt":"2017-10-28T20:46:25","slug":"halloween-elsa-and-the-index-simulacrorum-prohibitorum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/halloween-elsa-and-the-index-simulacrorum-prohibitorum\/","title":{"rendered":"Halloween, Elsa and the Index Simulacrorum Prohibitorum"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Cross-posted on the Corner.<\/a><\/p>\n

Kyle has already discussed the controversy over Halloween Moana here<\/a>, concluding\u00a0as follows:<\/p>\n

The Left used to insist on seeing people as individuals, not as members of groups. The goal used to be that kids of different races would play together oblivious to one another\u2019s superficial differences. This was commendable, and many a race barrier has fallen. Now the Left is determined to put those barriers back up, to teach kids to obsess over race. It is adamant that pigmentation has to be of overriding concern to you, and if it isn\u2019t to your children, your children must be indoctrinated to divide people based on skin color, to calculate varying levels of \u201csensitivity\u201d and \u201cprivilege\u201d based on melanin. It\u2019s not only ludicrous, it\u2019s alarming. Don\u2019t let this diseased mindset take hold. Go ahead and dress your kid as Moana this Halloween.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Quite.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure that Sachi Feris (who \u201cidentifies as White\u201d) blogging<\/a> over at Raising Race Conscious\u00a0Children<\/em><\/a>\u00a0would agree. Her views on Moana are predictable enough, but (as Charlie has noted<\/a>) it turns out that there\u2019s another character to be careful about, Elsa from Frozen<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Since [Feris\u2019 daughter\u2019s] 2017 Halloween choice was, in fact, Elsa, I returned to this costume choice and shared\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shared<\/em><\/p>\n

There is something ghastly about the soft, pious condescension of that verb, which well\u2026<\/p>\n

But back to the sharing:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is one thing I don\u2019t like about the character of Elsa. I feel like because Elsa is a White princess, and we see so many White princesses, her character sends the message that you have to be a certain way to be \u201cbeautiful\u201d or to be a \u201cprincess\u201d\u2026that you have to have White skin, long, blonde hair, and blue eyes. And I don\u2019t like that message. You are White, like Elsa\u2014if you dressed up as a character like Moana, who has brown skin, you would never change your skin color. But I\u2019m not sure I like the idea of you changing your hair color to dress up as Elsa\u2014because I think Elsa\u2019s character could also be a short, brown-haired character like you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d my daughter refuted. \u201cI want you to make be a long, blonde braid like Elsa\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can do that,\u201d I agreed. \u201cWhen we are dressing up as a made-up character who is White, it is OK to change how your hair looks, but I just want you to know that if you wanted to, you could dress up as Elsa and not change your hair.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My guess is that a five-year-old might well have worked that out for herself. Nevertheless Feris\u2019 daughter\u00a0has clearly understood that the best way to dress up to try to look like someone else is, well, to dress up to look like that someone else.<\/p>\n

Later on, we read that Ms. Feris, like a devout person scrabbling through holy books to find out what is or is not \u2018permitted\u2019, is still bothered by Moana\u00a0and has\u00a0thus turned to her smartphone to see what might be, as the enforcers now say,\u00a0\u2018okay\u2019.<\/p>\n

She tells<\/del> shares with her daughter that:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m trying to find more information about if a (White) person can dress up as another person\u2019s culture in a way that honors the culture, without making fun of the culture or using the culture in a way that uses stereotypes or makes people who identify with that culture feel uncomfortable\u2026\u201d Through some additional back and forth, I elaborated on the idea of stereotypes (click here for a conversation about stereotypes from when my daughter was much younger) and the concept of cultural appropriation, though without using this phrase.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The word killjoy doesn\u2019t begin to do justice to this miserable little anecdote.<\/p>\n

But, wait, there\u2019s more.<\/p>\n

In a follow-up post<\/a> Ms. Feris and Lori Riddick (who \u201cidentifies as Black\/Bi-racial\/Multi-racial\u201d), entitled \u201cHalloween as an Opportunity to Dismantle White Supremacy: Three Things We Believe This Halloween\u201d, advise their congregation<\/del> concerned parents what can be done:<\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. White parents who want to dismantle White supremacy have a special burden to check their entitlement on Halloween\u2014and make sure that their children\u2019s costume choices are not reinforcing a culture of racism.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Again, the distinctly \u2018religious\u2019 aspects of this are unmistakable, ranging from the assumption of guilt (\u201centitlement\u201d ), to the distaste for the existing state of the culture (\u201ca culture of\u00a0racism\u201d) and the reminder that neither they nor their children must fall, even accidentally, into the sin that is always out there (\u201cmake sure\u2026not reinforcing\u201d).<\/p>\n

    2. Dressing up as a White person (from the dominant culture of power and privilege) is not cultural appropriation\u2014but consider the development of children\u2019s healthy racial identities on Halloween.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    We learn that Ms. Feris\u2019 conversation\u00a0sharing \u201cwith her daughter also aimed to push back against an image of beauty that values Whiteness in addition to a specific body type and hair color\/style. Many children, both White children and people of color, do not fit into this image of beauty.\u201d No opportunity for a sermon should ever be wasted. And on that topic:<\/p>\n

    3. Halloween is an opportunity to have a conversation with your child about race, power, and privilege<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    More trick than treat, I reckon.<\/p>\n

    Note to any surviving citizens of the Roman Empire: No disrespect is intended by the clumsy and doubtless inaccurate appropriation of your language contained in the title of this post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Cross-posted on the Corner. Kyle has already discussed the controversy over Halloween Moana here, concluding\u00a0as follows: The Left used to insist on seeing people as individuals, not as members of groups. The goal used to be that kids of different … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[608,669,578,366],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10570"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10575,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10570\/revisions\/10575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}