Another Halloween, another opportunity for “woke” progressives to impose their identity politics-riddled agenda on unwitting public.
According to North Cook News, Lincoln Elementary School in a suburb outside of Chicago has already announced it would be cancelling Halloween out of respect for students who do not celebrate the holiday.
“As part of our school and district-wide commitment to equity, we are focused on building community and creating inclusive, welcoming environments for all,” Principal Michelle Cooney wrote in an e-mail to the Chicago Tribune. “While we recognize that Halloween is a fun tradition for many families, it is not a holiday that is celebrated by all members of our school community and for various reasons.”
Evidently, Lincoln Elementary was not the only one to take such a hard stance, the Daily Wire reports.
In Wisconsin, parents of Monona Grove School District were notified earlier this month the district would no longer permit Halloween celebrations at the school in a letter from the school’s administrators.
“The reality is that the celebration of Halloween at school leads to student exclusion,” the administrators wrote. “There are social, financial, and cultural differences among our families that we respect.”
Naturally, members of the community are disheartened by the announcement.
“Halloween parties may not be essential to a school’s ‘core curriculum,’” Betsy Hart of Wilmette, founder of New Trier Neighbors, told North Cook News via e-mail. “But disbanding this age-old tradition, the stuff of innocent childhood memories and joy, because someone somewhere finds it ‘offensive,’ smacks of Orwellianism. It is a symptom of a much larger problem and, well, it’s scary.”
But clearly, that’s a small price to pay for the progressives to appease the groups they’ve deemed worthy of running roughshod over American traditions.
And where Halloween remains intact, liberal progressives have still found a way to suck the life out of the holiday with guidelines for “appropriate” costumes — that is, costumes that are not guilty of racial appropriation, the College Fix reports.
For the third year in a row, officials at Michigan State University’s Residence Education and Housing Services department have issued guidelines for appropriate Halloween costumes. Posters have been hung throughout the dorms for students ahead of the holiday to remind them that Big Brother is always watching, always waiting to pounce on the first sign of political incorrectness.
The posters read, “Is your costume racially, culturally, or ethnically based?”
According to the American Mirror, which obtained a copy of the posters, items deemed insensitive include sombreros and mustaches, Nazi gear, illegal aliens, Middle Eastern clothing, and anything that points to Rastafarians. It is also “racist” if a white person dresses up like a black or other minority cultural icon.
The Morning Watch reached out to the University’s Inclusion and Intercultural Initiatives Director Paulette Russel to inquire about the posters. Russel explained, “(The) poster is to help students in residence halls to understand why certain depictions might be offensive to someone and if someone takes offense they have a reason.”
This insanity has taken place yearly since identity politics has taken center stage among the Left. In 2017, an article in Cosmopolitan magazine went so far as to say white children had a limited selection of costumes from which to choose to avoid being guilty of cultural appropriation or some other kind of offense. If they chose to dress as the white Princess Elsa from Frozen, one of the more popular Disney princesses in recent years, or really any of the white princesses for that matter, they would be “reinforc[ing] notions of white privilege,” but if they chose a costume of any of the non-white princesses such as Polynesian Moana or black Tiana from The Princess and the Frog, they are guilty of culture appropriation.
Cosmopolitan suggested parents use Halloween as an opportunity to teach their children about white privilege:
If your Caucasian son or daughter doesn’t get to be exactly what they wanted for Halloween, encourage them to take a step back and realize that they’re awash in privileges that the real Moanas and Tianas of the world will likely never see, because the world is full of racist ass—-. And those ass—- are becoming even more empowered. Our President is a hate group apologist who tries to ban refugees from seeking asylum in our country, simply because of their faith. Meanwhile, Black Americans continue to be killed by police, and antisemitic voices feel louder and more powerful than they have in decades.
In 2013, Highland Park High School in Illinois forced a student to remove his Jesus costume because the school claimed he was “promoting religion.” In that same year, the dean at the University of Colorado Boulder issued a memo asking students to consider the “impact their costume decision may have on others.” The memo included several costumes deemed inappropriate, including “geishas, cowboys, and Indians,” the Huffington Post reported.
Unfortunately, PC madness is not limited to the United States. According to U.K. publication The Sun, St. David’s Roman Catholic Primary School in Edinburgh, Scotland, responded to complaints from just two parents over the school’s Halloween celebrations by shutting down all references to Halloween. In lieu of a Halloween party, the school is now hosting an “Autumn Dance.”
An e-mail announcing the decision explained, “It was felt that any event organised for Halloween would not be inclusive of all children at the school.”
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