Caroline and I visited a local Halloween gift store looking for a couple of cute Halloween decorations to send to her niece in Germany. Cute is not in season this year, frightening, menacing, and mangled is. Torn-off limbs, hands reaching from the grave, and spiders dropping from above are about all we find. The masks range from ax-in-the-head victims to sexy nurse’s uniforms for that once-a-year have your teen look like a cheap pole-dancing slut; oh yeah, that is already popular year-round.
My favorite costume (tongue in cheek) is this practice uniform for our Mexican population. Of course, the Tinkerbell / Angel / Princess costumes all feature a blonde smiling cutey in the get-up, and the policeman/fireman/cowboy are All-American, red-headed, freckled whippersnappers, but if you are going for more than candy this special Halloween, have your future offender get ready with some pre-teen practice of donning his prison garb early – JUST WHY DOES THIS ONE COSTUME HAVE A HISPANIC CHILD AS ITS MODEL? Next year’s popular racially insensitive costume will have your child dressing up as an Indian Call Center operator!!!
Oh, wait wait, um maybe its because the in most SW U.S. prisons, Mexicans are the majority. We must all remember that stereotypes, are only born from truth. Sadly Hispanics by placing themselves as the majority, have made a fool out of themselves. besides you would never see a serial killer costume with a black child, because it doesnt happen, or a black panther costume with an indian in it, nor would you see cowboy costume with a native american in it.
Funny, I just googled your claim about a majority of prisoners in the southwest being of Hispanic descent and what I just found is that 51% of prisoners are white, 34% hispanic, 9% black, 4% Native American, 2% Asian.
As for the cowboy / Native American idea, well I’ve been to dozens of reservations across America and many many a time I have come across Native American Cowboys, even on Hawaii there is a strong Hawaiian Cowboy population.
Finally, serial killers never wear a particular garb, maybe this is part of the problem of actually finding them, while the Black Panthers as seen on this page http://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/ did not start out with a costume, uniform or other identifying dressing style.
While stereotypes may to some extent be born from a modicum of truth, it is typically a small narrowly evidenced cultural superficiality that is used in a propagandistic, nationalistic or in some other negative methodology that is intended to belittle, chastise, or alienate those people a majority want conformity from.