Halloween 2003 — both of them — passed in a blur of alcohol, jostling bodies and very cold legs. For the second year in a row, I wimped out and went home to bed before I got the chance to do any rioting, but that’s probably all right. Tear gas rarely improves an evening.

Besides, it sounds as though, as a Minnesotan, I might have been genetically compelled to break store windows, and I would hate to be that kind of jerk. I feel sorry for Paul’s Books whenever I pass it.

That aside, there were some great costumes out there. They may not have been unique, but every one of the various Duff Men we encountered made me happy. Points for chutzpah, if not for advance preparation, go to the approximately 350 pounds of man dancing naked in the middle of Lake Street, who was also bending over in such a way that if I’d had a good flashlight, I would be able to write the rest of this column about his intestines.

And then there were some pretty crappy costumes. The usual contingent in Jeans-Wearing Citizen costumes was out, of course, but I greatly prefer them to the people in blackface. Or, to a lesser extent, those in turbans and sombreros.

It’s still 2003, right? We haven’t tripped and gone flying backward off the end of the temporal treadmill to land in 1920? At least I didn’t see anyone in banana-yellow face paint and a coolie hat, bowing and intoning “ah so” through buck teeth. Or any Klan members.

Halloween costumes are about being something you’re not, most likely something you could never be, and on that score, dressing up as someone of another race makes good sense. None of the white people who were wandering State Street dressed for a minstrel show will ever get the chance to be African American, unless their choice of costume causes them to be targeted by some sort of racial-understanding genie.

But, come on. How is it OK to go around mocking other races? (You could argue that costumes are meant to be scary, not funny, but that’s actually worse.) Yes, technically you can dress up as anything you want, provided you’re not toting real weapons, but why deliberately choose something inflammatory?

It’s not as if racial discrimination is some crazy relic of the past, like the hysterical paroxysm, that we can laugh about as we all join hands around the campfire at Happy Camp Planet Rainbow. “Ha, ha! Remember when black people were socially and economically disadvantaged? Wasn’t that crazy? Hey, who wants s’mores?”

Circumstances being what they are, it seems to me that unless you’re interested in actively furthering the racial divide — in which case, please go away — it is simply meatheaded to dress up as someone of another race. All that costume says is, “Hey, you nonwhite people! You sure are wacky. It’s fun to be you, as long as I can rejoin the majority whenever I want.”

Yes, that’s totally the way to stamp out discrimination: mock people for being different from you and imply that being a racial minority is equivalent to being, oh, a vampire or some such Halloween standby. Something you wouldn’t want to be every day.

No one’s going to stop you from doing that; free speech is neat that way. But if you think of yourself as a nice person, why would you want to do such a thing?

Of course, there are counterarguments besides the existence of free speech. For instance, I can’t count how many Roman Catholic clergy I saw on Halloween; don’t those costumes offend nuns and priests?

Well, maybe, but the difference is that clergy are in a position of power in the church. It’s always OK to mock those more powerful than you; they can take it. Besides, joining the priesthood is a choice, not a circumstance of birth.

Also, you may argue, anything can be construed as offensive if you look at it through the right lens. Cheerleading costumes are disrespectful to those with school spirit. Fangs and capes mock the everyday vampires among us.

Yes, that’s true, and it is easily possible to become oversensitive. Being PC to the point of humorlessness is hardly desirable. All I’m saying is, you might want to adjust your lens of offense in such a way that you can avoid deliberately adding to social disharmony. I mean, blackface?

Jackie May ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in English.