Privileged Kids Don't Get It

(image via Guanabee)

This is a picture of Tulane Law Students at a "Border Party" organized by the president of the student bar association, Melissa Swabacker.

I get themed parties, I've been to my share (beard party, hot pants party, ugly sweater party), but beards, hot pants, and ugly sweaters are not cartoonish representations of cultural groups that real people belong to. I don't live on the border, but it's where my mother was born, and its something that my family has been crossing back and forth (and that has been crossing them back and forth) for 200 years.

Here are some excerpts from Wikipedia's entry on Cultural Appropriation:

The term cultural appropriation can have a negative connotation. It generally is applied when the subject culture is a minority culture or somehow subordinate in social, political, economic, or military status to the appropriating culture; or, when there are other issues involved, such as a history of ethnic or racial conflict between the two groups.
It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, may take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held.

& this isn't the first time college students have decided to reduce the border into stereotypes.

A Republican student club at NYU organized a game on campus called "Find the Illegal Immigrant"

College Republicans at Boise State University promoted a speech with a “food stamp drawing” that requires climbing through a hole in a fence and offering fake identification for a shot at wining a dinner at a Mexican restaurant.

Tulane Law Students Harsh Our Hope Buzz With Mexican Stereotype Party