Yesterday word got out that Macklemore wore an anti-semitic costume that resembled negative caricatures of Jewish people. Macklemore flipped and flopped on the issue all day long and looked messy as all hell. Antisemitism is real. It’s a prejudice that has survived hundreds of years in Europe and there was a time, not too long ago, where anti-semitism prevailed in the United States as commonplace. Just read The Great Gatsby, written in the 1920s and you’ll find plenty of antisemitism, which sucks because it’s one of my favorite books. The fact that there are people alive today who endured the Holocaust is a testament of how eff’ed up it is to recreate those images of Jewish caricatures that were used to fuel hate against them. And just because it’s less acceptable or common to be an anti-semite, by no means has this form of prejudice fully gone away.
Antisemitic WWII Propaganda
The resemblance between Macklemore’s costume is uncanny and honestly, what else would it be? It’s worth noting just how much he is backtracking on this too. First he tweeted that he had “Jewish” homies.
RT @morgaaaann: @macklemore are you Jewish or what <- nah. Just got hella good Jewish homies
— IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME (@macklemore) April 21, 2013
Then he tweeted that it was just a random costume.
A fake witches nose, wig, and beard = random costume. Not my idea of a stereotype of anybody.
— IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME (@macklemore) May 19, 2014
Seth Rogen who is Jewish called him out on his bull.
.@macklemore really?? Because if I told someone to put together an anti Semitic Jew costume, they'd have that exact shopping list.
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) May 19, 2014
Oh and Anna Minard of The Stranger went to the same costume shop as Macklemore and the nose isn’t a witch’s nose, it’s literally supposed to be the nose of a Jewish person.
As Jezebel notes, “Fagin is a fictional character who appears as an antagonist of the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist. In the preface to the novel he is described as a “receiver of stolen goods,” but within the actual story he is more frequently referred to as the ‘merry old gentleman’ or simply the ‘Jew.'”
The term Sheik directly relates to Arabic and Judaeo culture, “It is commonly used to designate the front man of a tribe who got this title after his father, or an Islamic scholar who got this title after graduating from a basic Islamic school.”
According to one fan who there at the concert Macklemore was making Bar Mitzvah jokes.
Yes, Seattle, this is Macklemore. "Went to Costume Display today and I feel like a man for the first time" #empvivid pic.twitter.com/pOnoGUVtpK
— Lynn Jacobson (@lynnjacobson) May 17, 2014
Macklemore released an apology on Tumblr but still won’t admit that he was wrong so much as this is a “wacky coincidence.”
“As it turns out the fake noses they sell at the costume store are usually big (my nose didn’t fit most of them). So I ended up with a big witch nose. I went with a black beard, because that’s the furthest color from my natural hair. Disguise was the intention. I personally thought I looked very ambiguous in terms of any “type” of person. Some people there thought I looked like Ringo, some Abe Lincoln. If anything I thought I looked like Humpty Hump with a bowl cut.”
Dude, it’s not a witch’s nose, you were making Bar Mitzvah jokes, you admitted you thought that was OK because you had Jewish friends, now you’re saying it was just a random coincidence. C’mon. Just admit you thought it would be funny but it turned out to be offensive, you should have known better and go home. It’s perfectly fine that we make mistakes. Just because you’re not racist or antisemitic doesn’t mean that you can’t say or do misguided things that assert those beliefs. We all trip up sometimes. Being perfect isn’t what makes you a good person, being accountable for your faults is.
