NAACP Denounces El Paso Group Who Wore KKK Costumes 

While I have gone on record as saying spooky season is the most wonderful time of the year, it also has its downsides. Like clockwork, white people use Halloween as an excuse to wear the most racist costumes imaginable. The El Paso, Texas chapter of the NAACP has spoken out after a group of teenagers in the city went viral for wearing KKK costumes. 

NBC News reports that there’s been widespread outrage in El Paso after several videos went viral showing the teenagers walking through several neighborhoods wearing the costumes. The NAACP released a statement on Sunday condemning the costumes. 

“The KKK hood is not a costume. It is an international symbol of white supremacy, racial terror, systemic murder, and intimidation directed at Black Americans and marginalized communities. To parade around in such symbols within the Sun City — a vibrant, diverse community built on solidarity, resilience, and mutual respect — is an intolerable affront to every single resident of El Paso,” the NAACP said in a statement.

Carl B. Dwyer Jr., the NAACP’s El Paso branch president, held a news conference on Monday where he and several community leaders spoke out against the incident. “Many believe that it’s just a joke,” he said after supporters joined in to sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which we know as the Black national anthem. 

“It hurts,” Dwyer said. “It hurts.”

El Paso Police Chief Peter Pacillas issued a statement also denouncing the incident and calling on locals to come forward with information about who was in the costumes. 

“The El Paso Police Department is aware of social media videos and reports of individuals, reportedly including young people, wearing Ku Klux Klan-style robes and allegedly shouting racial slurs while moving through a neighborhood in El Paso,” Pacillas said in a statement. 

“We are reviewing the available information to determine whether any laws were violated, including disorderly conduct or other applicable offenses. Free expression has limits when it crosses into conduct that threatens public order or the safety of others. Anyone with information about this incident is encouraged to contact the El Paso Police Department.”

“We may think that it is a joke, but it’s not a joke when it comes to the lives that have come before us,” Artie C. Maxwell Jr., pastor of El Paso’s Mount Zion Baptist Church, said during the news conference. “God, that many have died at the hands of those who have worn those costumes.”

Dwyer called on educators and administrators at El Paso schools to talk to students about racism and why the costumes were so offensive. “We’re calling on all of the superintendents, all of the school districts, please, speak up. Please, do something about this,” he said.

I will never, for the life of me, understand why white people feel the need to show their racist asses every October. It’s never funny and always winds up having consequences for the people who do it. Either pictures come out years after the fact, and you look like a racist dumbass, or, in this case, you may very well catch a case. 

On the off chance you’re white and reading this, do yourself and the rest of us a favor this Halloween: don’t wear the racist costume. Trust me. 

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