WHAT A HEEL: The Grinch Who Stole Thanksgiving
It’s a decades-long school tradition for kindergartners at Condit and Mountain View elementary schools in Claremont, CA, to celebrate Thanksgiving by dressing as pilgrims and Native Americans in bonnets, headdresses and fringed vests made from construction paper and re-enacting the first Thanksgiving. One year the Condit kids would be the Pilgrims, the next year the Mountain View kids. But not this year, reports the Los Angeles Times:
Parents in this quiet university town are sharply divided over what these construction-paper symbols represent: A simple child's depiction of the traditional (if not wholly accurate) tale of two factions setting aside their differences to give thanks over a shared meal? Or a cartoonish stereotype that would never be allowed of other racial, ethnic or religious groups?
Michelle Raheja, whose mother is Seneca, objected to her Condit kindergartner having to dress like a Pilgrim, and wrote a letter of complaint to her daughter's teacher: “It's demeaning. I'm sure you can appreciate the inappropriateness of asking children to dress up like slaves (and kind slave masters), or Jews (and friendly Nazis), or members of any other racial minority group who has struggled in our nation's history.” Raheja, a professor at UC Riverside and an expert on Native American literature, also thinks that the headdresses worn by the pretend Native Americans are “a racist stereotype” that is "dehumanizing" her daughter's ancestry.
Not all parents agree, reports LAT, and are upset that the school board decided that two schools will hold the event without costumes this year:
[M]any parents, who are convinced the decision was made before the board meeting, accused administrators of bowing to political correctness.
Kathleen Lucas, a Condit parent who is of Choctaw heritage, said her son -- now a first-grader -- still wears the vest and feathered headband he made last year to celebrate the holiday.
"My son was so proud," she said. "In his eyes, he thinks that's what it looks like to be Indian." …
Raheja is "using those children as a political platform for herself and her ideas," Constance Garabedian said as her 5-year-old Mountain View kindergartner happily practiced a song about Native Americans in the background. "I'm not a professor and I'm not a historian, but I can put the dots together."
The debate is far from over. Some parents plan to send their children to school in costume Tuesday - doubting that administrators will force them to take them off. The following day, some plan to keep their children home, costing the district attendance funds to punish them for modifying the event.
“She's not going to tell us what we can and cannot wear," said Dena Murphy, whose 5-year-old son attends Mountain View. "We're tired of [district officials] cowing down to people. It's not right.”
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