It wasn’t until last week that I heard in my LALS class, that stores nationwide were selling a controversial illegal alien costume. For those of you that don’t know how this costume looks like a basic description of it includes an orange jumpsuit, similar to prison garb, with “Illegal Alien” stamped in black across the chest; a space alien mask; and a fake Green Card
After some protest by Immigrant Rights Activist the costume was pulled out of major store companies. It irritates me when a few stores have said that the costume has been a hit http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/17/illegal.immigrant.costume/Today in class Angel brought up a very important issue at the end of class today. The controversial Illegal Alien costume is still being sold, and close to campus. This really upsets me; in fact it upset everyone in the room. I was already bummed out that I had to work on Halloween, but this just topped it off. A lot of the students stayed after class to have a more detailed discussion about it. I expressed my feelings saying that people are ignorant, and unaware of the consequences it has. They have made a mockery out of this costume, thinking it “funny”, just as the description of the costume in this link. http://www.buycostumes.com/Illegal-Alien-Adult-Costume/60504/ProductDetail.aspx It’s not even the costume that gets me mad, it is what they are trying to imply. It downgrades people and ridicules them. This issue already is too sensitive to be playing with it. People don’t realize that families, friends, and so on get affected by this. This only adds more stereotypes and stigma upon a certain group people. http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/10/illegal-alien-costume-a-teaching-not-a-laughing-matter/Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, but when things like this comes out I get frustrated and angry. Yet people still have the nerve to respond and say that by banning this costume it violates freedom of speech. We are going to try to head over the store tomorrow and try to have a peacefull talk with the manager.
