Seattle Elementary School Cancels Halloween in the Name of Equity and Inclusion
“As a school with foundational beliefs around equity for our students and families, we are moving away from our traditional ‘Pumpkin Parade’ event and requesting that students do not come to school in costumes”
Conservatives often talk about the ‘War on Christmas,’ but the left has also been waging a war on Halloween for years.
Whether it’s cultural appropriation in costumes or the claim that Halloween is somehow exclusive, there is something about October 31st that the left just doesn’t like.
In Seattle, one elementary school has decided to cancel the celebration of Halloween, saying that their choice is based on equity and inclusion.
Jason Rantz of KTTH Radio has the story:
Rantz: Seattle school cancels Halloween over ‘equity,’ says Black kids don’t celebrate
A Seattle elementary school canceled Halloween activities over concerns about student equity and inclusion. Specifically, Seattle Public Schools says Black males do not celebrate and, more generally, students of color feel marginalized by the holiday. One parent, however, thinks this is an “exercise in affluent white vanity that is wokeism.”
Benjamin Franklin Day Elementary (B.F. Day) in Seattle’s Fremont neighborhood typically hosts Halloween festivities each year. They include a “Pumpkin Parade” where students wear costumes if they choose. But the school administration changed its focus to “foundational beliefs around equity for our students and families,” and, consequently, they’re canceling Halloween.
This year the only thing spooky and creepy is the school’s commitment to wokeness. What could be more equitable than having strangers give you free candy? Not to the school’s Racial Equity Team that decided with staff to gut Halloween.
The school delivered the ghoulish news in an Oct. 8 newsletter to parents.
“As a school with foundational beliefs around equity for our students and families, we are moving away from our traditional ‘Pumpkin Parade’ event and requesting that students do not come to school in costumes,” the newsletter reads.
Here’s what the school is doing instead:
Instead, students will partake in inclusive fall events like “thematic units of study about the fall.” I’m not making that up. It’s the lead event in the newsletter. They may also review “autumnal artwork” while “sharing all the cozy feelings of the season.”
Rantz discussed the story during an appearance on FOX News:
This is an excellent point:
The stuff is no longer a bad joke from a few fringe "equity advocates." It is clearly about them trying to demonstrate who is in charge by being able to force acceptance of even the most absurd ideas into public policy. MUST be dealt with by saying NO. https://t.co/pMrgfaG17I
— James Higgins (@JamesEHiggins) October 16, 2021
Remember when Halloween was just fun?
Now is one of those times that I’m grateful for having grown up in the 70s and 80s.
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Comments
“Specifically, Seattle Public Schools says Black males do not celebrate…”
They do around here. Their parents take them door to door. They come in groups of about 10 to 15 at a time. They love the free candy. Duh!
P.S. They didn’t come last year due to COVIDS.
When I lived in places where I could give out Halloween candy, both city and suburb, the majority of the kids were Black and in later years, Hispanic, and boys were well-represented. Most of them did not live in the immediate neighborhood but instead their parents brought them to neighborhoods where they knew it would be safer and in some cases a neighborhood would be known by reputation to give out the really good stuff, like full-size candy bars. There would also be a cohort who were older (ie. teenagers) and lived close enough that they’d just walk to such places themselves.
It does not belong in schools and trick or treating is not any good behavior to teach children. Though it is American as apple pie democrats hate America
What is this expression “beliefs around”? Where does it come from, and what does it mean? Is it in any way different from the normal English word one would expect, “about”, or if one wants to get pretentious, “concerning”? Does it have anything to do with Psaki’s strange expression “circle back”?
Well, that’s what actually happens in practice, but in principle Halloween is kids in costume demanding candy with menaces, and thus learning to be hoodlums. Not the sort of education one wants to give ones children.
Now Purim is kids in costume coming to your door and giving you candy! That’s a much better lesson for them to learn.
Yes, but it involves prunes, doesn’t it? That’s just malicious. (😝)
“I have prune Hamantaschen and am not afraid to USE them!”
African Americans love those! Send some to Portland and they can celebrate Halloween once again.
Trick.
Also, notice it’s an elementary school? As in representing the ages of children most likely to be excited about having a Halloween celebration?
Is it true that there are families who do not celebrate Halloween and also as kids get older, I’d say by 5th or 6th grade, they tend to become less enamored with dressing up? Sure. But instead of offering options you gotta get the school’s type of “reasoning” into the kids’ heads while they’re young enough to accept it without question.
So because black students (ALLEGEDLY) don’t want to participate nobody else can?
The heckler’s veto.
Halloween isn’t as much fun after puberty, so some 3rd graders might not feel like participating.
It does not belong in schools and trick or treating is not any good behavior to teach children. Though it is American as apple pie democrats hate America
Hey, what good is the power if you don’t use it! Pretty soon race cards will be worthless.
“Specifically, Seattle Public Schools says Black males do not celebrate”
On Hallowe’en night, kids all across America approach strangers and demand loot using a ritual threat of mayhem.
And black males don’t participate?
What’s so different about Halloween night?
I recall when, about 30 or 40 years ago, some of the more… effervescent televangelists warned his flocks (of sheep) about Halloween.
Times sure do change.
Like when that celebrated author of juvenile novels celebrating unholy magic and evil pedagogy joined Team TERF. Who to root for now?
Times sure do change.
Wouldn’t ewe know it.
But all’s wool that ends wool.
Obviously “those” white woke people either forgot nor ever heard,/saw Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” album.
Doesn’t count. Michael Jackson was trans-white.
This has nothing to do with equity or white privilege. It is killjoys looking for an excuse to make kids miserable. Unless it is based on a survey of the actual little boys involved, the statement that little black black boys don’t celebrate Halloween is sheer prejudice, as racist as it comes.
It’s not borne out by my experience, either.
These jerks are trying to ruin a fun holiday, and stir up racial resentment between normal kids. It is unkind.
.
Just more “concerned white ladies” of both sexes speaking on behalf of blacks they believe are too stupid to speak for themselves.
Classic soft bigotry of low expectations.
Wicca practitioners hit hardest by this decision? /
Halloween is a fun and harmless event. It isn’t A celebration of anything for the overwhelming majority of people. It’s actually a good teaching opportunity about cultural things we engage in without knowing what the origins are. Use the week of halloween to explain those sorts of modern hallmark card commercialized events in relation to their historical underpinning and you have a good lesson plan.
The White Karens busy destroying the fun of a totally politics-free kid’s holiday are so busy they didn’t realize the initials of their school spell
BFD?
Those initials are fine. Many of the students will go on to the Sam Houston Institute of Technology,, or the Franklin University of Central Kansas.
I thought that was the Florida University of Combined Knowledge.
Jack-O-Lantern cancelled. The dark sarcasm.
Look out – when Karen can cancel Celebration of X because Y doesn’t participate and gets away with doing so, should fully expect Karen to try again.
Next time X = Easter and Y = Muslim
Or X = Memorial Day and Y = (fill in blank)
Then we should cancel Kwanza.
Makes sense.
We can’t have a holiday that only one race celebrates.
That would be racist. Right ?
One day a year the shades will be pulled down, all the lights dimmed. and the door will not be answered.
Yes, this reasoning eventually leads to canceling everything that Muslims don’t like, which is practically everything in Western culture. No school dances for example, because Islam forbids both music and dancing, so the Muslim students don’t participate.
You’re behind the power curve on that one. Many school districts have already moved spring break away from Easter and do not have Good Friday as a school holiday. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but in my county, we have a judge who tried to insist that he would be holding court on Thanksgiving Day. He was eventually told that he was welcome to do so, but there would be not bailiff, recorder, or other personnel in attendance.
In 1917 the New South Wales Legislative Assembly had to close on Yom Kippur, because both the speaker and deputy speaker were in synagogue.
Next, they are going to fuss about Charlie Brown “gas lighting” us for years in regards to “The Great Pumpkin”
My experience (at the time), living in a suburb of Oakland (THAT Oakland) we had crowds of minority kids Trick or Treating. They came in their church mini vans from some of the troubled parts of Oakland so they could celebrate without danger (other than diabetes and obesity). They were costumed to the hilt and the adults shepherded them along. The police association in Oakland fielded a “pumpkin patrol” of volunteer officers and local adults to keep the kids who T or T-ed on home turf safe. [My experience with all that ended some 25-30 years ago; things may have changed.]
Annnd… isn’t Halloween actually All Halloweds Eve, followed by the Day of the Dead in the Caribbean and Mexico…..? lots of brown and black folks there and they seem to make a big thing of it. If anything its the honkys/gringos cutting in on their holiday…. Maybe that’s the gripe.
That’s true. We should demand that the school hold Halloween, but only for the white kids.
Because anything else would be cultural appropriation… wouldn’t it?
Since the “Jack o’ Lantern” was originated in Ireland, perhaps we could consider All Hallow’s Eve (the original name, since the next day was All Saints’ Day) an Irish holiday?
They bray “equity and inclusion”, but they practice diversity (i.e. color judgment), not limited to racism, and political congruence (“=”), or selective exclusion, under the Pro-Choice religion.
They practice “Inequality and Exclusion” if you are white. Even more so if you are not a Democrat.
“Some people take all the fun out of Halloween.”
Michael Myers
One cannot “Cancel” Halloween at the mere denouncement of same. A school may cancel in school celebrations of Halloween and the like. But they cannot cancel Halloween.
Halloween will still occur in the neighborhoods, through trunk or treat in parking lots, or parties at home.
My take? The school can go fuck themselves. They apparently want to remove anything from public view so blacks can’t participate.
Can’t have them knee grows running amok in the streets grabbing candy from unsuspecting while folks.
Schools are more concerned with allowing psychologically deranged teenage boys wearing skirts shoving their richards into 9th grade girls.
Trans boys have pretty much replaced priests as the people you need to worry about.
Public schools are the new danger zones.
I don’t actually have a problem with this. I mean what is Halloween actually about? It seems to be about celebrating death, demons, and evil in general. Make Evil Great Again? I’m also not sure I know anyone who celebrates this, though shops take advantage of any excuse to sell crap.
Seems like an own goal by the Left, but hey I’ll take it.
So, now, in addition to being anti-Judaism and anti-Christianity, the Dhimmi-crats are also anti-pagan.
Proof that no belief system is safe from the Dhimmi-crats’ obnoxious totalitarianism. Well, except for the supremacist, totalitarian, belligerent and hate-filled ideology of “Submission,” which appears to be the only belief system besides communism, that the vile Dhimmi-crats embrace and laud.
Now this is strange. The control freak preachers want to ban Halloween because it’s evil, and the control freak “progress”ives want to ban Halloween because it’s racist.
Call a preacher “woke” and see what happens. Call a wokester “Baptist” and see what happens. Enjoy the show. Pass the pop corn, pls.
I see an opportunity for entertainment, don’t you? Sort of like tying two cats’ tails together and throwing them over a clothes line.
.