First Commentary Article

     Last week was Spirit Week, a yearly weeklong event preceding homecoming. The event encourages students to dress up to school according to the theme of the day. Dressing up is intended to boost school pride and encourage students to show their enthusiasm during the school day. However, many students raised eyebrows at one of the themes slated for Thursday- Fiesta Day. Whether they were aware of it or not, the students who participated were complicit in the exclusion of students of color.

    It's obvious that whoever came up with the idea decided to make it as innocuous as possible- Fiesta Day would bring to mind images of ponchos, sombreros, and maracas, maybe a mariachi band.

   Whether they think about it or not, there's no doubt these images formed a pretty clear stereotype in the mind of the student body.By the time Thursday rolled around, I saw plenty of ponchos and sombreros, but I wasn't expecting the moustaches. Or the brownface. When it comes to the adornment of various iconic and highly stereotyped items in a specific culture, white kids at Bowie are unaware of the insidious racism that they wear with their costumes.

    The day before the scheduled Fiesta Day I checked Twitter and was surprised to find many Bowie students expressing opposition, even revulsion, towards Fiesta Day. Being half Mexican myself, I agreed with what they were saying- that it could be offensive to Mexican students. I agreed, but I wasn't offended. I was exasperated.

    I'd had Fiesta Days my entire life- from the time I was a little kid living in El Paso (where most of the kids were Latino and Mexican as well, but I'll touch on this later) through elementary and eventually middle school, where kids would straight-up dress "like drug dealers".

 I spent time reflecting on this kind of progression. How funny moustaches and wide-brimmed hats belonged in the same category as border-hopping and drug dealing seemed obvious to me when I was younger. They just went together. That's how Mexicans act, how they talk and look. What about me? I left no room for myself and my friends, mostly Latin@, in this stereotype.

  I think about how there were jokes about Dora crossing a river or even the janitors at the school. We, of course, had no idea what any of this really meant, but we ignored that at the sake of telling a joke.

   There's a reason the growing trend of "offensive" humor hasn't ever really appealed to me, and it lies in the internalized racism I've always had, and my point of vantage as being white as well.

    Racism, contrary to what anyone might believe, has no generation gap. Bowie, being mostly white and middle class like myself, has allowed the perfect environment for an event like this to happen. It's only logical that kids who have little to no personal knowledge of people who don't adhere to the common stereotype will grow up believing it. This belief is generational and shared among peers. It can be trendy, can manifest in Halloween costumes, bathroom graffiti, social media posts.

   Fortunately, another discussion can also be had- a way to have students truly learn about they dynamics of the world around them, and to really look at things from every perspective. I don't consider myself immune to racism, I made mistakes in the past and will most likely continue to make them in my process of "unlearning" harmful behavior.

  Bringing up this point in the past, I have been met with those who believe that this strong opposition to seemingly harmless things like wearing a poncho to school is ridiculous. Many will say that this generation's tendencies to find everything offensive or insensitive are promoting censorship. I believe in the contrary- that our ability to speak out against harmful things has given us freedom.
 
    My intention isn't to tell people to stop doing things somebody somewhere might find offensive, as those who vehemently (and often blindly) oppose "political correctness" might believe. Those who expressed their opinions on an event that would only last a few hours proved that they had the ability to question what they had always believed as fact.

  The fact that so many students expressed their views on something that would normally go uncontested shows that our student body is changing. With this shift, I am looking towards a Spirit Day that will make memories, not bring bad ones back. Whether the lessons are about core subjects or social awareness, students attend Bowie to learn about themselves and the world. In this respect, Fiesta Day was an unexpected learning opportunity.