Warning: Rant alert

First, I have to say that I had a lovely 'Halloween.' Because I live in a high-rise, all the kids are regulated to going to the mangement office to pick up their candy, so no knocking on my door. I went out for a couple of drinks with friends, talked about business journalism and American politics, went home, did a bit of writing and was in bed by 10. At my age and because I do not have a house to throw a party, I find dressing up kinda pointless.

On Monday, I was tagged via Facebook by a friend who urged me and some of her other friends to check out a post she had written. Entering a rather large drugstore chain in Canada, she noticed that one of the costumes that she noticed the store was selling was a "Rasta Man" outfit:

Retailers have been selling dreadlocks wigs, Bob Marley costumes etc for years, but I found the image on this packaging to be particularly offensive. Why is the Black man wearing the wig also wearing a bone necklace? Why does he have tribal markings on his face? If you went to a Halloween party and saw a person dressed up as this "Rasta Mon" would you not be offended? Prince Harry dressed up as a Nazi soldier a few years ago, and he was publicly rebuked.

I believe that the costume that ________Mart is selling is just as offensive as it would be to squint one's eyes and be "Asian grocer" or wear a prosthetic nose and be "Jewish banker". They wouldn't dare sell an image with a swastika on it so why is it acceptable for them to sell an image such as the one in the picture above? It's just not ok. It's not about the locs, the bone necklace or the "tribal" markings, it's about the way in which they've been put together to represent a "rasta mon". Sell a "dreadlock" wig, but why one with that particular image?
I contacted _______Mart to voice my concern and was less than impressed with their response. (see below).

Here is the response:

Thank you for writing to us....... One of the great underlying perils of merchandising and retailing, regardless of diligent testing for possible hidden, offensive, or unintended messages, it may be interpreted that a product is unsuitable for the general public. To refuse to sell a product that one takes issue with would clearly be a form of censorship on our part which is a position we will not take.

Thank you for your feedback. We will continue to monitor your concern and make any necessary adjustments.

Say what?

They don't sell Porn, do they? 

One of the things ( many things) that continues to boggle my mind is how the opinions (or facts) that people of color raise when they object to offensive images, are always symbolically trumped by people who most likely, have never had any personal experience with being objectified because of their ethnicity.

In essence, we do not have control over stopping hyper-characterized images. There is this assumption that we can be mocked and we do not have any say over the mockery. In essence ( and because of the vitriol that we get after a public complaint), we are supposed to bend over and take it up the.....If the, ahem, 'majority' thinks it's funny and not offensive then gosh golly gee, I guess 'dat whut it is, massa.

But this shit happens every Halloween. After all, Halloween is no longer an evening where kids dress up and get some free junk food, encouraging the onset of juvenile diabetes;  it signifies a time when grown-ass men and women can act out their ignorant and racial resentment. White girls can act "ghetto" and people laugh. And some sorry fools feel that they can dress up like President Obama and Michael Jackson.

It's not funny.

We are supposed to guffaw and brush it off our shoulders, but when a large store essentially says 'f$%k you' when you make a legitimate complaint, Halloween doesn't seem so much like fun anymore.

However, there have been a number of pre-Halloween incidents that lead me to believe that this blackface is not just about 'Trickin' and Treatin' but more about how 'post-racial our world has become. Umm, no so much.

Minh-Ha T. Pham over at Threadbared writes about a photo layout in the October 2009 issue of French Vogue. Now to be fair, any publicity is good publicity is good for those who need to sell their overpriced garments. But this 'ish is tired, yo:

".....(S)ome are defending French Vogue for its provocativeness ("creative images . . . can sometimes [be] off-putting") and for its postracialism (arguing that it is "sort of beautiful in that having a person of one ethnic background look convincingly like she might be of another race shows the interconnectedness of us all"). But what is on display in French Vogue and on Diez's runway is not beautiful black bodies, but what Nirmal Puwar describes as "the universal empty point" that white female bodies are able to occupy precisely because their bodies are racially unmarked: "[Thus] they can play with the assigned particularity of ethnicized dress without suffering the 'violence of revulsion.'"

Yeah, okay. In a time when black models struggle to find work, they take a white chick and throw some paint on?

 Harry Connick got a mixed response when he put his foot down in Australia, who pleaded ignorance:

Dr Anand Deva, the frontman of the Jackson Jive act, which also included a man with white make-up on his face playing Michael Jackson, said they had not meant to cause offence.

"We've spent so much time trying to not make black people look like buffoons, that when we see something like that we take it really to heart." Harry Connick Jr .

I see where Connick was going with this, but even this quote is questionable.

And Tyra, Tyra, Tyra, who as an African-American should pick up a history book, also put her foot in a pile of....when her show, America's Top Model foolishly decided to 'darken up' her model contestants.

I added a comment to my friend's Facebook page that she should publicize the costume situation. Contact a reporter or pitch a story yourself, I urged. However, Halloween is over and people are concerned about Christmas- and most likely, people will not be outraged by this story. I am going to stop shopping at the drug store out of protest, and I'm sure many of her friends will, too. I don't think this is enough. But if we scream from the rooftops, will anyone really listen?

Or care?

I don't think so.