SGA Diversity Committee draws criticism for using stereotypes in costume demonstration
Student Government Association's annual "We're a Culture, Not a Costume" awareness event was met with negative response from students on social media Wednesday Oct. 15 after the diversity sub-committee utilized students dressed in blackface and other cultural stereotypes in a Halloween costume demonstration.
"(We're a Culture, Not a Costume) is a campaign that we've done for three years except this time we did it live," said Chuck Mahone, president of SGA. "We figured this would be more impactful. It gave students something to stop and look at and say 'Hey, that's not right.' If it's just a poster, people can ignore it. But they can't ignore this."
Freshman Austin Jones and junior Stephen LaDuke said the concept could have been brought to light in a different way.
"I don't know how I feel about (the Diversity Committee) using blackface, even as a learning experience," LaDuke said.
The topic of blackface, the two agreed, has too much history behind it to even use in a demonstration.
"I think that was a good costume to represent a culturally insensitive costume but I would have chosen a better way to (illustrate) that," Jones said. "Completely painting someone's face like they're black? That's too far."
Mahone said that student outcry against the use of blackface, however, is something that can be seen as a positive.
"The whole point of the campaign is to raise awareness," Mahone said. "I've been here (at CMU) for five years, and I've never heard people have intellectual conversations about things like this that are going on. This campaign has spurred these intellectual conversations."
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The student dressed in blackface volunteered to be apart of the "We're a Culture, Not a Costume" campaign. Mahone said when the student was selected to wear blackface, however, he was "almost in tears" because he did not want to portray such a racially-driven Halloween costume.
A photo of SGA diversity committee and volunteers, one of whom was dressed in blackface, sparked a lively debate on Central Michigan Life's Facebook Page.
While students may be talking about it, Holland freshman Jai McKinley believes not everyone will understand the intended message the Diversity Committee is trying to get across to students.
"If (blackface) is used to raise awareness and it is promoted as such and students are aware that (the demonstrations) are for awareness, then (using blackface) could be acceptable," McKinley said. "There was definitely different ways (SGA) could have gone about doing this. This is a college where we're split between people who don't care (about these issues) and people who do, and for the vast majority who don't care about things like this, they're just going to pass by, see (the blackface) and not know that it's wrong."
Although the live demonstration was just a one day ordeal, Mahone said there are still plans to hang posters and create a video to combat culturally insensitive Halloween costumes.
"(SGA is) trying to make a video and we still have the poster piece, but we've been doing the poster piece for the past three years and it's never had the discussion starter that it has now," he said. "This (live demonstration) has only been going for a day and we feel like we've accomplished our goal."
