Missing the point entirely

There's a real gem of sheer stupidity in The Daily Texan today. Apparently, a spirit club on campus decided to have a costume party with a cowboys and Indians theme, for reasons that are hard to discern from this story. To make the story even funnier, they chose a particularly bad time to throw this non-P.C. bash, since we are still smarting from another lovely event that another fraternity had last year.

Last year a UT fraternity was suspended by their national chapter for throwing a "Gin and Juice," themed party where people allegedly wore racially offensive T-shirts.

Despite the fact that racist ugliness has been an issue lately, what with the frat party and the recent vandalism of the MLK statue, the cowboys and Indians theme was just too sexy to resist. Yes, believe it or not, it's a sex thing.

"Most of the guys were dressed up as cowboys," said Culver, a government senior. "Most of the girls were dressed as Indians. They looked like they were wearing Pocahontas costumes, and they had feathers in their hair."

They're just trying to create an atmosphere where the grown-up version of cowboys and Indians can flourish. Of course, there's no reason that cops and robbers can't be a suitable costume party to create that suggestive atmosphere that encourages young people to tie each other up. That's the problem you usually see with people who think it's just hysterical to thumb their nose at political correctness--they are so busy trying to be offensive that they have no imagination. There are all sorts of inequitable power relationships in our society to exploit for these kinds of thrills--there's no reason to lean on racist stereotypes.

The hands down best part of the story, though, is the way that the organizers refuse to understand why this type of party might offend somebody.

"When we came up with the party idea, and someone said 'cowboys and Indians,' we decided that some people might find that term offensive, so we made it the 'cowboys and Native Americans party' instead," Deitering said.

There you have it, folks. This is why I always point out that "political correctness" is a term invented by the right so they had an endlessly useful strawman. The girl complained that they were making a mockery out of the genocide of Native Americans, but by the time this filters through all the proper right-wing channels, it's a debate over what the proper term is for the people our European ancestors tried to wipe off the face of the planet.