Halloween is supposed to be fun. You can dress up as someone or something completely different from yourself for one night. You can be a celebrity, a character from a movie, a vampire, a ghost, any sort of character you can think of.

But every year, there are costumes that make people stop and ask: Who thought this was okay?

Some Halloween costumes are controversial because they are political or offensive. Some take stereotypes and cultures or traumatic parts of history and turn them into something people can buy for $25 and wear at a party. And sometimes companies themselves are responsible for putting those costumes on shelves.

And a recent example is Target’s 2026 Halloween controversy.

Target released a children’s costume called the “Kids’ Glows Under Blacklight Circus Clown Halloween Costume.” The costume was a black-and-orange clown outfit with black gloves and a mask with an exaggerated grin and small top hat. The promotional image showed a Black child wearing it. Almost immediately, people online pointed out that the costume and the image resembled racist caricatures associated with blackface and minstrel shows.

Target had to remove the costume and apologized, saying that it was awful and shouldn’t be included in its offerings.

And it is, I think, where I start wondering: How does something like that make it through an entire company and end up being sold to children?

Because blackface isn’t just another Halloween costume that happens to offend someone.

Blackface has a very specific history in America. During the 1800s white actors in minstrel shows would wear dark makeup to portray exaggerated and degrading stereotypes of Black people. Black people were portrayed as lazy, unintelligent, violent, childish or ridiculous. The stereotypes were deeply embedded in American entertainment and popular culture.

And so when people see something like those images today, it is not just a costume. There’s a history to it.

We’re talking about “people being too sensitive” and a lot is missed in the discussion on “people being too sensitive”.

A clown might look at a costume and say, “It’s just a clown. Why are people making it about race?”

But intention is not the only thing that counts.

You can say that you didn’t intend to be racist and still create something with racist imagery in it. The question shouldn’t be “Did you mean to offend someone?” It’s “What does this image mean because of its history?”

And Halloween is just that kind of thing because people generally use the holiday as an excuse to push boundaries.

We have all seen costumes based on stereotypes of different cultures, religions, races, disabilities or traumatic events. Sometimes people defend them by saying they’re “just jokes.” Sometimes the argument is that if someone is offended, they simply shouldn’t look.

But I don’t think Halloween will open the door to turning someone else’s identity or history into a costume.

And there’s also a difference between dressing as something and dressing as a stereotype of someone.

Wearing a costume inspired by a culture is not necessarily the same as making fun of that culture. Dressing as a historical or political figure isn’t necessarily offensive either. The problem begins when the costume relies on reducing a whole group of people to a joke.

And that’s why the Target situation bothers me so much. This wasn’t just someone trying on an “ugly” DIY costume for a Halloween party. This was a product that was developed, marketed and approved by a company before it went to customers.

It’s weird, to think we don’t think critically about what we see because we have entertainment as entertainment from that.

Halloween is supposed to be a time when we get to pretend to be someone else.

Maybe we should also think about who we’re pretending to be— and what that costume means to the people we’re pretending to represent.

Because there is a difference between being scary, weird, funny, political, or controversial for Halloween and turning someone else’s history into the punchline.

And if a costume requires us to ignore that history for it to be funny, maybe it wasn’t a good costume to begin with.

---

Sources

“Blackface: The Birth of an American Stereotype.” National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution, n.d., nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/blackface-birth-american-stereotype. Accessed 4 Sept. 2026.

Brown, Nicholas P., and Neil J. Kanatt. “Target Apologizes for Children’s Clown Halloween Costume after Backlash.” Reuters, 24 Aug. 2026. Investing.com, www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/target-apologizes-for-childrens-clown-halloween-costume-after-backlash-4874089.

“The Long, Unfortunate History of Racial Parody in America.” Smithsonian Magazine, Smithsonian Institution.