Halloween

    Over Halloween I've noticed a lot of posts on the internet about the "We're a culture not a costume" message being delivered from the an Ohio university. The campaign quickly became a meme that trivialized its message. I think that fact that the issue became a meme shows that there needs to be more dialogue on this issue. Imitation may not be the highest form of flattery in this case.

http://www.ohio.edu/orgs/stars/Home.html

     But I also thought about these issues and how they exist in the art world, were racial sensitivity is a contentious issue. Some feel it inappropriate to use the traditional art forms of from other people's cultures. At a certain point racial sensitivity reaches levels of extremism. The mentality circulating is that people who are not of a particular race or culture are not able to predict how offensive something may be because they do not belong to that group. I simply don't buy this, I think everyone is capable of gauging how offensive something is, but of course whether or not they choose to do so is the real issue at the core of racism.