The Native American in the middle is dressed as a famous Jamaican. Would it have been offensive if he dressed as Sitting Bull?
Terry Rambler, chief of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, has been at the forefront of the effort to force The Washington Redskins, a privately owned NFL sports franchise, to change its name and logo of long-standing because both are allegedly racist. [ As I have made clear many times, the team’s name is not racist, as neither its origins nor current use suggest or imply racist intent, purpose or impact, and the team’s owner has a First Amendment right to call his team whatever he wants. The decades long political correctness stunt has gained more traction under the Obama administration, because the Obama Administration and Senate Democrats do not respect the Constitution or follow it when it gets in the way of its agenda. (See: drones, Obamacare, immigration, NSA domestic spying, harassment of reporters, IRS partisan activities, recess appointments, Libya bombing, selective prosecution, putting government pressure on the Redskins to change its name, etc… )
But I digress.
This year, Rambler’s Halloween costume was Jamaican musician Bob Marley, complete with dreadlocks, wig, and rasta beanie. He also wore appropriate make-up to look like Marley.
Here is what the chief looks like most days:
Here he is on Halloween as the Reggae icon…
The costume is making Rambler the target of criticism from both sides of the controversy: Redskins defenders who view his make-up as “blackface” and thus hypocritical, and his own Team Political Correctness, which sees Rambler as engaging in the same kind of insensitive conduct they claim the Washington Redskins embody.
To make things worse for Rambler, there was another recent Bob Marley controversy in Gaston County, (North Carolina), where a sheriff’s captain apologized for wearing dark make-up as part of her own Marley Halloween costume after her in-costume photo appeared online.
And thus your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Ethics Alarms 