Work

Why Shouldn’t Race Be a Costume?―A (Qualified) Defense of Wearing Cross-Racial Make-Up During Halloween

Year: 2023

Type: article

Abstract: Over the past decade, many politicians and celebrities in North America have found themselves embroiled in scandals that involved them having worn black make-up and in at least one incident white make-up. In most of these cases, the used make-up was part of a costume for Halloween, Purim, Carnival, or a themed party. This article challenges the view that wearing cross-racial make-up on such occasions as part of personal costumes—as opposed to costumes that are integral to specific cultural traditions, such as the New Orleans Zulu parade—is always wrong. To do so, it assesses the five most promising objections to this practice. Although some of these objections count against certain uses of cross-racial make-up, I show that in several high-profile cases where such make-up was worn, none of them had force, whether because the objections themselves were implausible and/or because they did not apply.

Source: Journal of Controversial Ideas

DOI: 10.35995/jci03010006

Author: Bouke de Vries

Institution: University of Zurich

Language: English

Topic: Philosophical Ethics and Theory

Subfield: Philosophy

Field: Arts and Humanities

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Funder: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung

Award: The Ethics of Loneliness and Sociability