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CityLab: America Has a Halloween Costume Equity Gap

CityLab, October 30, 2019: America Has a Halloween Costume Equity Gap

“For Halloween, you have to make a costume.”

This was the warning given to me by a mother as we waited in line to sign our children up for weekend classes in Manhattan. As we chatted, we discovered that my daughter would be entering kindergarten at the small diverse public school in East Harlem that her son had been attending for three years. I asked her if there was anything I should know; she offered a few observations about academics, and then, the Halloween warning. It was late August.

I thought she was exaggerating. How hard could a kid’s Halloween costume be? But once the academic year began, the issue re-emerged: We got a note sent home from school with an emphatic directive that the costume be homemade—not expensive, not fancy, just not store-bought.

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