We’re a Culture, Not a Costume Too

[1]847 words

A student group at the University of Ohio has received praise [2] from the mainstream media for its “We’re a culture, not a costume” campaign.  The group is called Students Teaching About Racism in Society.  As with all multicultural groups, it is fundamentally a product of the administration, beginning in 1988 as a class [3].  Ohio University also features a multicultural center [4] with no fewer than 31 separate student organizations [5] (including STARS) featured on the site.  The group’s president is one Sarah Williams (age 24) who works in the school’s Division of Student Affairs Office.  The Dean of Students, Ryan Lombardi, said “We were immediately receptive… we thought they were great, well done, and professional.  We immediately agreed to fund them [6].”  Of course.

As with any of these stories, when you read “students launch campaign,” mentally substitute “students who double as campus employees launch a campaign with funding and support from both the campus administration and a multicultural center that is exclusively dedicated to pushing their political goals.”

Since the campaign began, dozens of other schools have also been requesting posters, which STARS will now receive $500-$1000 for [7].  Seeing as how many other schools have multicultural centers that do nothing but campaigns like this, demand will not go down anytime soon.

Why does STARS think this is necessary?  Well, people are dressing up on Halloween.  For example, someone might dress up like an Arab terrorist, or wear blackface, or dress up like a geisha.  This is Very Bad and worthy of a campus-wide campaign.

After all, says Williams [8], “Nobody wants to dress up as Thurgood Marshall, W.E.B. DuBois, or Barack Obama.”

Well, don’t tell all the people making Barack Obama costumes. [9]

(Not sure you could dress up as W.E.B DuBois.  You could perhaps have a two-part costume with a white person dressing as someone he eulogized as a “great man,” Joseph Stalin [10].)

[11]There has been some opposition, mostly talking about how the group is taking everything too seriously and this is just a joke.  This is true of course.  The hallmark of the contemporary left is how utterly humorless they are, which leads to their ever-more frantic attempts to regulate speech and private organizations.  It’s not unusual to watch them literally burst into tears [12] when they hear different opinions or begin screaming for the administration to shut down their opponents.  Even the most cowardly campus conservative can usually withstand listening to a progressive without succumbing to hysteria.

This misses the point though.  As with all political questions, this is about who, not what.  There are no white students in the campaign because white privilege tells us that whites are incapable of being oppressed (unless they’re homosexuals of course).  If you’re a white student, you might feel oppressed you have to sit through orientation programs that tell you you’re evil [13], attend classes that summarize the entire history of your people and your country as racism and oppression, have professors curse you out or occasionally call for your extermination [14], face discrimination in admissions when you apply for jobs when you graduate, and get through college without various centers, task forces, programs, student groups, counselors and special classes to coddle you for four years (or however long it takes).  This is actually just proof of your racism.

Therefore, we’ll never see a campaign like this against costumes that mock, say, rednecks, or priests, or the Palin family.  In fact, the Huffington Post fell all over itself to promote this campaign [15], but also has featured articles on mocking the Palin family [16] with costumes (including Bristol).  Just a joke right?

European-Americans, believing Christians, or political conservatives, are allowed to be attacked and mocked openly.  Nor will school administrations throw money at them or dedicate entire departments to making sure their feelings are not hurt.

We’re ok with this of course, because we don’t want special privileges.  We also think Halloween is about having fun, not grim propaganda campaigns designed to ruin things for everyone else, which seems to be what multiculturalism is all about.

This campaign is a sick joke, and it should be treated like a joke.  If this is serious, and we have to treat it as serious, then why is it ok to mock some groups but not others?  We have to be willing to say that it’s not funny to dress as a Viking, or a slutty nun, or a redneck, or a priest.  If not, then it becomes apparent what this is, another expression of the rage of a privileged class [17].

We’ll be posting more flyers over the next couple days.  Feel free to print them out and distribute them on your campus.  You’ll have to do it yourself, as recipients of “privilege” we won’t have school administrations throwing money at us.  The full-size versions are available as PDF downloads next to “Download attachments:” below (if you are reading the full article).  Be sure to take pictures of places you put them up and send them to [email protected] [18].  You may want to take video footage of you asking people what they think about the flyers. Send that to us also.

Source: http://www.westernyouth.org/articles/we-re-a-culture-not-a-costume-too/ [19]