It’s easy to forget what most holidays are really about. Christmas is about family and toys, but it’s supposed to commemorate the birth of Jesus. Today Thanksgiving is about turkey and football, when really it’s a celebration of English invaders surviving their first winter in the “new world.” And Halloween? Well, when you’re a kid it’s about candy, and when you get a bit older it’s all about trashy costumes, parties and not ending up on instagram in a bad way. The truth though is that Halloween is about fear, how it changes us, and what we do to combat it. Which is one of the reasons why it’s such a great holiday for the “Halloween Hoodie Campaign.” Independent producer Rochelle Oliver’s attempt to stamp out bigotry and prejudice, by attacking what all too many people “fear”.
Rochelle Oliver, a producer based out of Miami, is trying to change the way Americans look at Halloween, race and “hoodies.” Inspired last year by the shooting of Trayvon Martin, Oliver started an anti-stereotype movement on YouTube in October of 2012. The 60-PSA includes dozens of Miami professionals and artists from different races and ages putting on a hoodie as they say “I’m a black man. Are you afraid of me?” The video went viral and was picked up by media outlets from CNN to around the world. This year, she’s back. Realizing in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal that the fight against racism and discrimination is still hot as ever, Oliver is developing a documentary that takes a scientific look at how stereotypes and fear can have dangerous results. Her goal is pretty lofty, she wants to eliminate racism.
“People say to me all the time that racism will never end,” Oliver said. She’s currently using crowdsourcing tools such as Kickstarter to raise $20,000 as a way to offset production costs associated with her documentary. On her campaign page (www.HalloweenHoodie.com) she explicitly says that her documentary, if developed, will actually prove that racism can be eliminated. “The thing is, when you look at stereotypes and fear from a scientific perspective, just the facts, you can actually come up with easy one-plus-one solutions.”
And what better time to focus on “Fear” than the scariest night of the year Halloween? While ghosts, goblins and Catwoman outfits may rule the night, black men are still feared and discriminated against in America. The results of this fear run from frustrating situations like stop and Frisk policies to downright deadly as in the case of dozens of racial profiling cases where innocents are shot. Usually the way we deal with fears is to ignore them, but Oliver recognizes that the best way to change anything is to actually confront that fear and change it. In addition to supporting the kickstarter Oliver is asking people around the country to put on a hoodie and tweet pictures of themselves with the hashtag #wewontforget to remind us not just of the senseless death of Trayvon Martin but to continue to battle the fear that leads to bigotry and the loss of so many others. Some names we will never know.
“It’s not just about what happened to Trayvon Martin,” Oliver said. “In some ways, George Zimmerman is a victim, too. I believe that he bought into the myth that black men are bad people. Anytime we believe in a stereotype and then starting living up to that stereotype, we ourselves become victims. No one wins.”
If you know you’re going to spend most of Halloween dressed as a scantily clad Batgirl or a Vampire from Brooklyn take a few minutes before you head out to support the Halloween Hoodie campaign. You’ll be doing more than just frightening people for one night of the year. You’ll be scaring them for a good cause.
Written By Jason Johnson
