They haven’t made masks like that since the 80s… maybe the 90s.
What you probably saw was Batman or Captain America or Hulk or Iron Man - but with no skin tone on the costume. Likewise if you see a Black Panther costume, it is just has a mask, no skin tone.
Kids do get a bit of a pass because they don’t know better. But their parents should. I know last year there was a story of a kid who dressed up as MLK for a school presentation with blackface. Clearly he didn’t understand why that wasn’t cool, it should lie on the parents to understand why, but people are ignorant.
To @Bobo 's point about masks… eh… you know they make political masks Trump, Putin, Kim Jung Un, Bush, Obama, Clinton, Nixon, etc. with a variety of quality. I am not sure how much those appeal to kids. I guess for political satire it gets a bit of a pass for me. Now that I think about it, that Halloween before McCain/Obama election, I saw two kids like 12 or 13 in suits, one with a McCain, one with Obama. No idea if the races matched (probably not), but they were just like “Vote McCain! Vote Obama!”. I guess that falls under passable area for me. I don’t know if they make such things for other celebrities. I mean generally a mask of a character has been acceptable. And I guess that included skin tones in the past, though perhaps it shouldn’t have. And there is a subgenre of anime cosplay that includes doll like heads. Disney had a misstep with a Maui costume which was basically a body sock with tats, but it was a brown color. I dunno, those cases get a bit murkier for me.
I do know having attended several conventions, belonging to cosplay groups, and doing some costuming myself, playing characters of different races or genders doesn’t require anything more than just putting on a costume. Honestly 3 of the best local cosplayers are black and they come up with some freaking amazing stuff, like the twins from Thundercats (they are twin women), and this other guy does a lot of horror stuff, twisted fairy tale or Silent Hill type stuff. I can’t recall ever seeing someone attempt black or brown or white face at a convention. There are some fantasy characters like Dark Phoenix or a dark elf drow I’ve seen, but that is generally considered a fantasy race and would be similar to being painted blue or purple for a character. But I’ve never seen anything like these sorts of for the LOLs Halloween costumes.
Your counter-example for why a racially insensitive, willfully ignorant white woman shouldn’t be fired was to posit a scenario that involved another racially insensitive, willfully ignorant white person.
I for one don’t think we should base our policies on providing every possible allowance toward that particular demographic.
Not a good parallel. How about an orderly who I used to work with a long time ago who got a swastika tattoo on his forearm and was summarily fired? That’s a real-world example of a real-world problem.
What? No. There are tons of super hero masks with skin-tone on Amazon today. These ones, this one, etc. (Edit: heck, the superman beanie even has a review with a black man wearing it, I believe.)
The skinless batman and spiderman are absolutely the most common, though, I’ll grant you that.
But yes, I could have said “Obama” and “Trump” as well, as I’ve seen those too in my neighborhood, and that would take away @anon61833566’s point about whether or not it’s not a real person (which seems irrelevant, since I wouldn’t let my kid put on blackface to dress as Black Panther, regardless of whether he’s a fictional person.)
Hell no. Children are just as capable of being awful as adults. They don’t arrive on Earth morally pure only to be later tainted by our evil society - they’re people.
Whether an action is offensive or not is not determined by the person taking the action, but by the person offended. If you choose to dress in blackface and actually have the intent of not offending anybody, it is still unacceptable.
Say, for example, I had no intent to offend but instead intended to display a healthy respect for human sexuality by walking around naked and performing public sexual acts. The fact that I meant no offense will give me little solace while I sit in jail for committing public indecency.
She got fired for embarrassing her hospital. If the photo hadn’t gone viral (embarrassing the hospital in front of a large virtual audience), I doubt she would have been fired.
Viral’s the key modifier that makes it a firing offence.
I haven’t heard anything along these lines, but I wonder if there’s more to this (as in some history at the hospital, or what came out of any discussion the hospital administration had with her regarding the blackface).
I strongly doubt firing people for making stupid jokes is going to cure these problems. You may make people more careful of what they say and do in public, but the false beliefs will still be there. If doctors believe black people feel less pain, that’s something to handle in med school.
I make a pretty strong separation between racism with real world consequences, like those people you read about who call the cops on a black man because a black man can’t own a nice car honestly, and, shall we say, cultural insensitivity. Actions that obviously insult people due to their historical context, but in themselves are not harmful. Firing a nurse for something like the former might be justified, and the kind of behavior described in your second story definitely should have consequences for the involved because that involved their actual work as physicians.
Now, that really isn’t a good parallel. Getting a swastika tattoo indicates a firm commitment to a violent and genocidal ideology, and if he changed his opinion he’d make sure to remove it. It’s not comparable to dressing up in a way that you find offensive.
None of those examples are the old school plastic with the two eye holes and the mouth slit that you can’t keep poking your tongue through, even though it hurts every time.
Those others were cheap cardboard masks for maybe birthday parties? Last time I went down my costume aisles at Walmart and Target I don’t recall seeing anything like that. Though now that I think about it, I do recall these new plush style “big head” looking masks that included Rick and Morty, Batman, Wonder Woman, and things like unicorns or cats. So yes, I guess you can find masks with skin tones, even though the old school ones they don’t make like that. (It’s all this felt or foam felt stuff.)
But like I said, masks of characters could be acceptable.
