A poster campaign was started by a student organization (Students Teaching Against Racism in Society) at Ohio University and has managed to spread widely across the internet.[1] The photo above on the left (viewer's left) shows a poster released as part of this campaign. The poster on the right is a part of a parody campaign apparently meant to counter the original. There are a few other counter posters that show fictional characters holding photos of people in costumes of them (including a character from Avatar (sorry, I never saw the movie so I don't know who that is) for one). These parodies, however, seem to strengthen and demonstrate the racism that is being shown in the posters from Ohio University: they compare POC to fictional and non-human characters. While intended to make a joke along the lines of "It's Halloween, relax!" "It's no big deal!" or maybe "Can't you take a joke?," these posters show first hand the dehumanization necessary and indicative of racism.
When seeing the backlash against the educational campaign, the question that came to mind was "How can someone argue with such a clear demonstration that they are showing real people as caricatures, stereotypes, and generally Other?" It seemed to me that the parody is actual helpful to the original campaign, but it seems that others have not analyzed it the same way. For someone analyzing the symbols in these posters and the context, it becomes clear that the backlash is reactionary and an attempt to reassert privilege and hegemonic standards. Similar to how Rod Stewart was seen as a "rebel" by actually spouting conservative and reactionary views (conservative as its original meaning: one who wants to keep the current society), people who support the parody posters can envision themselves as "talking straight" "saying it how it is" and ridiculing others for being "too p.c."
On Halloween I saw many "Native American" costumes. I wondered if the people wearing them had any idea that Native Americans are still around, they seemed to assume they were some character to be brought to life in their costume straight from the urban outfitters previously titled "Navajo" line. I wondered if they knew that Native Americans experience poverty at very well above the national average, that Native American women are "2.5 times more likely to be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes as other women in the United States,"[2] or even that their costumes were terribly inaccurate.
It is a true mark of privilege when one can get away with saying something isn't offensive when responding to a message by the oppressed group telling them that in fact they find it offensive. Privilege allows one to think that they get the say on what is offensive, when in fact that judgement belongs to the people being offended and oppressed. Clearly they would know better when they are being depicted in a demeaning way.
I can relate to this from recently I posted a picture up on facebook of my friend up who is a mix of Indian, Arab and Black ethnicity which was just a normal picture of them smiling and forming a heart with their hands which I had edited to have hearts surrounding them and a mutual friend neither of us really talks to much made an inappropriate joke stating he looks more like a terrorist each day. To which I replied he looks nothing like Timothy McVeigh in order to point out how he was stereotyping and being offensive to both of us. And while we both can usually take jokes like that, I believe there's a time and place where you can make fun, but usually its making fun of those stereotypes not enforcing them.
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