Here’s a Mom Defending Her Decision to Dress Her Son as the KKK for Halloween

I just. I can’t even. With all the everything in the news this year about people hearing offensive costumes for Halloween, you’d think I’d reach a point where nothing would surprise me.

But then there’s this: A Virginia mom, defending her decision to let her 7-year-old son dress as a member of the Ku Klux Klan for Halloween.

I’ll go ahead and let that sink in for a moment.

Among the reasons mom Jessica Black thinks this is okay, as reported by Virginia ABC affiliate WHSV-3:

• Dressing as a member of the KKK is a family tradition.
• It was okay when her brother wore the same costume when they were kids.
• “It’s supposed to be white with white, black with black. Man with woman and all that. That’s what the KKK stands for.”
• The KKK raises money for St. Jude’s. Did she say that? Am I hallucinating? No? She said that.

Despite this being a supposed family tradition, the boy apparently got the idea from watching the movieFried Green Tomatoes and said that he thought it was “cool.”

When I wrote about Julianne Hough’s ignorance of the possibility that blackface could be offensive, I said that we need to do a better job educating our kids about race history in America. A number of readers took me to task and said I’d missed the mark–that people in Julianne Hough’s generation are growing up in a more diverse, global, post-racial society.

I think that we are a long, sad way from living in a post-racial society.