OPINION: Aunt Jemima get-up was offensive, but free speech sometimes is
Michael Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former vice president of the American Civil Liberties Union.
A white student shows up at school wearing blackface and, you've got to admit, it is shocking and offensive to many - both black and white. You'd expect the school principal to do something. But isn't Halloween a time when kids are given leeway to shock us with their masks and painted faces? How many Halloweens of years past have we seen youths dress up as Indians, for instance, complete with painted faces?
The Commack High School senior, all of 17 years old, must've thought he was standing on solid constitutional ground when he came to school as Aunt Jemima last Friday. On past Halloweens he had dressed in drag - including coming to school one year as Pocahontas - without running afoul of respectability. But this time, in the eyes of school officials, he had gone "too far" in his mocking or his portrayal (you decide) of Aunt Jemima.
In this post-racial age, when nobody takes exception to Aunt Jemima on the pancake box, teenagers don't get why adults are so upset over a clever or inane (you decide) Halloween outfit.
As black youngsters, my friends and I would kid one another about that character. The joke back then was "Aunt (pronounced "aren't") Jemima on the pancake box?" It was our first experiment with punning - which simultaneously conveyed our distaste for the brazen stereotype of black women as fat mammies who knew how to make some tasty griddle cakes. Likewise, we saw Aunt Jemima come to the big screen in the original "Imitation of Life" film (1934), where a white woman and her black boarder go into business together selling pancakes. When a crusty old white guy doesn't have the dough to order another stack, he tells the proprietor that in exchange for another helping he'll give them a million-dollar idea: "Box it."
Today, school authorities' million-dollar idea is to show their disapproval of racial stereotypes by sending a white student home when he shows up in blackface and pokes fun at the Aunt Jemima character. Instead of taking the opportunity to teach about the history of racial stereotyping or racism in the media and advertising, they simplistically express their disapproval by punishing a student's free expression, in the guise of teaching him a lesson about "racial insensitivity." Had I been the student, I might have insolently asked, "What's the problem? Aren't Jemima on the pancake box?"
But then, had I been the student, would the authorities have had the same reaction? Somehow I don't think so. Acting shocked and aggrieved on behalf of "offended" black and minority people is something school authorities do often - even when blacks, like me, aren't bothered by race-based silliness or simple youthful Halloween exuberance.
The trick to selling this kind of paternalism is all pretense, of course; pretending, for example, that an Aunt Jemima costume is "racially insensitive" in ways that a Pocahontas costume isn't. And if offensiveness is the standard for objection and dismissal, we might as well cancel school Halloween celebrations altogether. By adult standards of political correctness, we will take all the fun, adventure and satire - indeed the trick and the treat - out of Halloween, and ban any costume that frightens our sensibilities or dredges up bad memories of America's discredited past.
And if so, what lessons are we conveying to students about individual freedom and free expression? Must our students park their rights, their senses of humor, their distrust of authority, and their mocking of adults' idols and advertising icons at the door of the school house?
This student has done us all a big favor by reminding us that freedom of expression can oftentimes be offensive. So what? In a free society, free expression warrants the widest of berths and protection.
