Y’all . . .
Every. Single. Year. Like clockwork, it never fails. Maybe it’s all the pumpkin spice in the air. Or maybe eating too much candy corn triggers some dormant recessive gene for minstrelsy. Or, or, or . . . perhaps Spirit Halloween is pumping concentrated essence of Jim Crow through the freakin’ ventilation systems across America.
I don’t know WTF it is, but every Halloween I find myself confronted with one of the greatest unanswered psychological mysteries of the human condition: What the hell happens to certain otherwise functional white folks at midnight on October 30 that makes them decide they will wake up on October 31, brush their teeth, look in the mirror at the white face they’ve had all their lives, and get this uncontrollable urge to say,* “You know what? Fuck being Caucasian. Imma be a Negro today!”*
Listen Y’all, I ain’t got no degree in psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience, or whatever branch of holistic medicine studies white folk who experience a sudden, catastrophic loss of racial common sense between drinking pumpkin spice latte and buying black shoe polish. But after years of watching this annual outbreak go down in White America, and spending all day yesterday reading books on psychological disorders, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR), The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, I believe I have finally identified this undiagnosed psychiatric condition.
Y’all ready? Call the American Psychological Association because I have coined this condition Seasonal Caucasian Judgment Collapse (SCJC).
M’kay, so hear me out.
For 364 days, 8,736 hours, 524,160 minutes, and 31,449,600 seconds people like this live as fully functioning ordinary white American who “doesn’t see color” because racial blindness is a preexisting condition that miraculously clears up right before Halloween Eve. He or she rolls out of bed in the Halloween morning, doesn’t wash their legs in the shower, will walk the dog or kiss the cat, complains about property taxes, drink their coffee, and call the police on some unfamiliar Black teenager who walked past their hydrangeas.
They make emergency Costco runs to buy a 30-pound tub of mayonnaise, two unseasoned rotisserie chickens, and a year's supply of orange-flavored probiotic chewies. Then they leave one-star Yelp reviews because the Mexican waiter didn’t smile while bringing their eleventeenth refill of ranch dressing.** **And then later in the day you’ll see them trolling some Black writer’s comment section talkin’ ‘bout their imaginary Black friend and how their great-great-grandmother was one-thirty sixth Cherokee, even though Ancestry.com traced their entire bloodline back to a family of English turnip farmers with outstanding warrants for sheep theft and buggery before they escaped on some ship to Virginia.
All year long, these ordinary people go to work. They pay their bills. They remember not to put aluminum foil in the microwave. They separate the white clothes from the darks and remember to take the chicken out of the freezer. They know not to feed chocolate to the dog. But then Halloween arrives and these same functioning adults with fully developed frontal lobes can’t figure out why smearing their entire face black might be a bad idea.
And the thing that gets me is that they ignore THOUSANDS of other costumes. Cats, vampires, witches, Barbies, Wednesday Addams, fucking inflatable T. Rex. Hell, they could’ve been some character from the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe, or even Donald Trump’s radioactive orange face, with them chapped anus lips and that dead ferret stapled to his scalp. Walk down 6th Avenue in the West Village on Halloween and you can see other possibilities like a pregnant nun, a slutty Pope, a constipated Minion, a Temu Jesus, a six-foot walking penis and testicles or nasty hemorrhoid, a giant bottle of Ozempic, or even goddamn emotional-support pickle, FFS.
But nooooo. ALL THESE OPTIONS out here and somehow a white woman working at a Burger King in Faribault, Minnesota apparently found herself in the bathroom with a jar of black shoe polish, looking like Al Jolson fell headfirst down a chimney on his way to belt out “Mammy” for the grand reopening of a Jim Crow minstrel show.
Y’all, how does this happen? Does something deep in the Caucasian subconscious whisper: Pssst, black paint?
And what especially gets me, is that the Halloween blackface tradition reveals a fascinating contradiction in white American psychology. For 364 days of the year, some of these same people remain deeply committed to not being Black. They hate everything about us and tell us how undesirable being Black is. We’re too loud. We’re angry and ghetto and deviant and stupid. They don’t want us living in their neighborhoods. Don’t want our children in their schools. They tell us our hair is unprofessional. They’ve got “Black fatigue.” We play the race card. We make everything about race and skin color.
But then the clock strikes midnight on October 31, and suddenly Karen or Chad is standing in front the bathroom mirror with a shower cap, and a dream deferred, talkin’ about, “Where is my greasepaint?”
We’ve had at least 100 years of scholars and others explaining why blackface is racist. But this unnamed white woman didn’t care. Despite the fact that she works in a building with a crown and the whopper. She could have put on the crown. Ma’am could have wrapped herself in some aluminum foil, or taped two sesame buns t oher titties, thrown some lettuce in her hair and gone as a leftover burger. My point is, she had options but instead, she listened to her ancestors who whispered: “Be Black.”
What’s so fascinating to me is how these folks spend so much time obsessing over how inferior a certain group is and then suddenly becomes so desperate to imitate, mock, control, and consume them. And then after they walk outside with blackface, they act shocked every year. “Ohhh, I had no idea this would offend anyone.”
Seriously? How? Have you been living under a rock because blackface has had more public service announcements than forest fires. How many more documentaries, blog posts, employee handbooks, corporate diversity trainings, and social media arguments do these people need? ** **Seriously, there are people living in caves who know not to do blackface. Uncontacted tribes in the Amazon are probably sitting around a fire saying, “I don’t know much about American culture, but that Burger King lady needs to wash her fucking face.”
At the end of the day, I think Halloween makes these kind of racist folks comfortable enough to show their work. Because for one night, they get to feel like the rules are suspended, they get loosen their inhibitions, and all that racism that’s been quietly sitting beneath the surface gets to come outside and declare, “I just wanted to be Black.” And the blackface costume becomes an alibi.
Then they wake up on November 1 and just like that, Seasonal Caucasian Judgment Collapse goes into remission and they return to normal life. And they will spend the next 364 days wondering why Black folks keep making everything about race.
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