Halloween Store Staff Will Talk You Out of Your Racist Costume Idea

Ricky’s, a popular Halloween (and other stuff) chain based out of New York, is offering a unique service for all those idiots out there who think that Halloween is the perfect time for blackface. (There is only one perfect time for blackface and that time is Never O’Clock.)

The store has started offering special “costume concierges” whose secret mission is to steer ignorant Halloween revelers away from offensively slathering their faces with the ol’ shoe polish and towards more creative approaches to portraying non-white people in their costumes.

From The New York Times:

Ricky’s, a beauty chain based in New York that started offering “costume concierges” this Halloween season, tries to steer light-skinned shoppers who want to go as dark-skinned characters to more “creative cues” other than skin color. “You don’t have to be so literal as to darken your face,” said Lorne Lucree, director of marketing at the company.

True! There are lots of ways you can portray a person of a different race without changing your skin tone. Look, Miley Cyrus — who usually isn’t the picture of racial sensitivity — managed to pull it off two years in a row. And here’s Kristin Wiig as Michael Jordan. And here’s an entire listicle of people who have managed just fine.

Thank you, Ricky’s — for doing a public service that, in a perfect world, would not be necessary.