One of the keystones to celebrating Halloween is dressing up in costume. Usually costumes are harmless: they imitate our favorite characters from TV shows or movies and some are witty, like a bacon and egg couple costumes. There is also an offensive side to Halloween costumes, where people think it’s OK to dress up in other people’s cultural dresses or even imitating the stereotypes that are presented towards certain groups of people.

We often hear about college fraternities hosting racist costume parties, such as Arizona State University’s Tau Kappa Epsion’s 2013 MLK Black Party. Celebrity Julianne Hough dressed up in black face as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren from “Orange is the New Black.” Penn State’s Chi Omega hosted a Mexican Party in 2012, where people dressed up as Native Americans. There’s also a Catilyn Jenner costume this season, an offensive and transphobic costume. It’s shocking to me that in 2015 people are still racist and wear blackface.

In her article “Dear White People/Queridos Gringos,” Aya de Leon talks about how white people have misappropriated and taken over Day of the Dead traditions and turned them into cool things to do for Halloween costumes or decorations.

“Like the Pilgrims, you have begun to take over, to gentrify and colonize this holiday for yourselves. I was shocked this year to find Day of the Dead events in my native Oakland Bay Area not only that were not organized by Chican@s or Mexican@s or Latin@s, but events with zero Latin@ artists participating, involved, consulted, paid, recognized, acknowledged, prayed with.”

The Day of the Dead is a holiday in Mexico when people remember their loved ones. White people appropriate costumes from Day of the Dead not because they care about the culture, but because they think they’ll look cool.

De Leon ended her article saying: “You have abandoned Halloween, left it laying in the street like a trampled fright wig from the dollar store. Take back your holiday. Take back your own indigenous culture. Fight to reclaim your own spirituality. Please. Stop colonizing ours.”

She’s right. Halloween has become basic, people have gone and started misappropriating other cultures to make it more interesting, even going so far as to mock and stereotype these cultures. Next Halloween, please, don’t be racist, and just buy a “Game of Thrones” costume.