Race, Class, and Mardi Gras

I’m about to rain on someone’s parade.

Photo by Serkan Turk on Unsplash

I love Mardi Gras! I love sharing my culture and heritage with others regardless of where I am in the world. It’s a holiday meant to be shared and to us native Gulf Coasters, the holiday is like a second Christmas. We go to balls and parades, gorge ourselves on king cake and moonpies, and show off our bead collections.

But sometimes loving something means you ignore some of the more problematic aspects, more than the possibility of maybe getting shot, someone throwing up on you, or your car getting towed.

So…are we celebrating colonialism, capitalism, or classism? Or all three?

What have you noticed about Mardi Gras or Carnival? I’ll go ahead and put it out there: it’s a colonizer’s holiday.

The cities and nations that famously celebrate Carnival have a strong history of colonization. Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago, the Bahamas, Barbados, Cape Verde, Belize, Mexico, Panama, Italy, Belgium, and of course, the United States.

For those unfamiliar with Carnival, it’s a celebration of various lengths that prepares revelers for the Lenten season. In the United States, the Mardi Gras season officially begins on January 6, Epiphany, and concludes at midnight right…