Let me preface this by saying, I’m someone who’s learned to pick her battles – not because I’m incapable of fighting some of them – but why waste my time and energy and turn bitter over discourse with people that is clearly futile from the beginning?
Still. Here I am. About to lay a heavy truth on you.
I have neither the duty nor the responsibility to explain why the centuries old Mexican tradition of the skull face paint, or calavera, is not a costume to wear to a party. It’s not some glamourous get-up to show off at the bar. It’s not something you can slap on your face just to sneer when I look offended. Because, yeah I’m mad when I see it. I’m furious, I’m livid, I’m seething with rage at the disrespect. But my wrath, you guys, isn’t with you. How could I be when you likely have no clue why I’m indignant to begin with? I’m pissed because when I look offended, and I get told it’s just face paint, I know immediately you were never taught the history behind it. I know immediately that the white Euro-centric education we received in this “melting pot” of a country did you no favors in teaching you the weight of culture. I know I can’t blame you for what you were and weren’t taught.
I’m mad with the fact that the country I was born in, this superpower that polices the world, so built on cultural diversity? It has one month for Black History. Name me five black icons not from the Civil Rights Movement. It has one month for Hispanic Heritage. Hell, don’t name me people, if you can just name which four weeks out of the year it is without looking it up, you’re better off than I am already. I had to do my research just to find out if there’s a time period dedicated to some part of the Asian community, and even that’s a joke, because representing the largest continent on earth with the most diverse of regions (the Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Pacific Islands) and celebrating all of them in one month is impossible. So why isn’t there a White History month?
You guys, let me break it down for you. Every month is White History month when you go to school here, okay? I have never had a single person of color tell me they learned anything significantly more than what white people were doing at any given point between Roanoke and the Civil Rights Movement. American history as we were taught it isa part of white history. But even then, I’m gonna tell you a little story about American history that doesn’t get talked about enough: stolen valor.
The Stolen Valor Act of 2013 amended Title 18 of the United State Code to incriminate a person making “fraudulent claims about military service…subject to a fine, imprisonment for…an individual who, with intent to obtain money, property, or other tangible benefit, fraudulently holds himself or herself out to be a recipient of a Congressional Medal of Honor, a distinguished-service cross, a Navy cross, an Air Force cross, a silver star, a Purple Heart, a Combat Infantryman's Badge, a Combat Action Badge, a Combat Medical Badge, a Combat Action Ribbon, a Combat Action Medal, or any replacement or duplicate medal for such medal as authorized by law.”
Basically, the House of Representatives said don’t wear the United States Armed Forces uniform without the service to back it up just to get that 10% discount at the Apple store, because it ain’t right.
And if I have to tell you why it isn’t right, you’ve got another thing coming. I have close friends in the military. I had a family friend who served in Desert Storm and left a suicide note when he came back blaming the nightmares. I don’t need to tell you about the World Wars or the Korean/Vietnam conflicts. I don’t need to tell you about everything post-9/11. I don’t need to tell you about the sacrifices constantly made by the service members who give their lives for each other alone, just so that the rest of them can continue protecting our freedoms.
But I also don’t think I needed to tell you about the Stolen Valor Act for you to see how wrong it would be for someone to put on the uniform (and most of the time, they put it on incorrectly and it’s how they get found out) just to get some ridiculous benefit out of it. I think there’s an unspoken reason why, in recent years, I have never seen someone dress up as a member of the US Armed Forces at a Halloween party when over 5000 soldiers have died since 9/11. There’s a weight to it. There’s an inappropriateness because these are people that have earned their stripes with great sacrifice.
It’s the same reason blackface is unacceptable. I am not black, and it’s neither my place nor my task to educate you if you don’t understand why that’s just as wrong as stolen valor. If you can’t understand the struggle black people have gone through since the Civil Rights Movement, since the Civil War, since their pivotal and largely uncredited role in the Colonies’ fight for independence, since before this country was even a concept other than an extension of English imperialism. How many THOUSANDS of black people have also died, have been whipped and shot and lynched, fighting for their freedoms. If you can’t understand the blatant injustice in donning blackface and making light of a people who are still dying daily, making involuntary sacrifices in their strain for true equality... where maybe one day their culture can be appreciated and assimilated too but not at the cost of making it a joke and then turning around to frown upon it when THEY express it… then “culture” has only demanded respect from you when it’s been white or when it’s been explicitly nationalist. Even those few weeks in school when Black History Month aligned with your history class or your literature teacher had you read some abridged version of the Underground Railroad, and it never sank in as part of YOUR history too, did it?
In a country so built on diversity, that means that every story is our story in this melting pot. As such, the origins and subsequent story behind blackface, being as vile and degrading as it is, demands the act to never be replicated, Halloween or not.
Which brings me back to why I was angry about the calavera face paint to start. Because when I wear it, I’m just some Mexican American wearing her “true” wetback colors, but when you wear it, it’s striking and different and "cultured." I’m constantly having to compartmentalize it, because like I said, I can’t be angry at you when you wear another culture’s paint or dress for your Halloween costume if you haven’t been taught about it. However, I can be annoyed as hell that you couldn’t take five minutes of your day to look up if you might be appropriating something that carries a lot of meaning or history. Like a soldier’s uniform does. Like blackface does.
In light of this, if it’s not obvious already why you shouldn’t take something from another culture because you didn’t earn those colors with the racial plights that THAT particular people of color have had to endure, then let me give you the historical context to enlighten the situation for you. It’s simple and it’s powerful and it’s meaningful to us.
Mexicans grow up with the personification of death – an aptly called Santa Muerte, Saint or Holy Death depending on your favorite flavor. There’s an incredible mix of Spanish, Latin, and Indigenous influence. We’re taught not to fear Death, that death itself is not the end, that with death comes a new journey and Death is merely a friend to help us get to our destination. Aside from the religious traditions that come with Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) on October 31st, the festivities that come after the Catholicism are largely a culture clash between the living’s centuries-held history of feeling responsible to help the dead move through the spirit world and also celebrating them. We clean their headstones and supulchres and tombs. We leave a trail of cempasúchil flower petals, so they can find the way back home, where we’ve prepared their favorite foods and leave them untouched at a shrine that holds water for their spirit’s thirst and salt to cleanse their souls.
And it’s thanks to the indigenous of Mexico, the Náhuatl (colloquially known to most European descendants as the Aztecs), that we have the skull face paint fit in to these customs. The paint not only honors the dead in one’s family, but it acts as a visual reminder to the spirits that the only thing we the living can be sure of is our own imminent deaths, that we will in fact join them one day.
So it’s not about looking pretty. It’s not about seeming exotic. It’s not about being unique. It’s a rite that carries great weight. Death comes in colors for us, to ease the fear and trepidation about it. To make it easier to swallow. While we grow up with and live alongside Death, every October 31st is especially a day to not forget those we’ve lost and those we’ll eventually meet again.
But I shouldn't have had to tell you that. Educate yourself and ask yourself if you’ve earned the struggle, the fight, the sacrifice, or the deaths involved. Ask yourself if you've truly earned the culture behind it. Please think twice before you thoughtlessly wear someone’s colors and stripes this Halloween.
