The word “racist” used to mean something negative. I mean, it used to refer to something negative. These days, when used by the Left, it seems to just mean “racial.” If you refer to someone’s race, that alone could be racist. Then again, if you don’t refer to it, that could be, also. It’s confusing.

Sometimes, “racist” might just mean Halloween.

Follow me, if you will, to the intersection of political correctness (here) and immaturity (here). And let’s see what we can find.

Here’s something;

NPR hopes to clarify the rules this All Hallow’s Eve, via an article it published Saturday called “This Halloween: Be Careful How You ‘Hang’ Your Decorations.”

A guy in Montana wrote in, asking a question of imagery:

“While decorating our house for Halloween recently, my wife and I were discussing options for displaying a realistic skeleton. I was recalling my childhood of decorating a friend’s house, which involved hanging a skeleton by a hangman’s noose. My wife said we probably shouldn’t go that route, given the connection to lynchings in our country’s past.”

The article’s now-enlightened author says she never realized how racist the Halloween decorations were back when she was a youngster:

“[W]hile terrifying, it never occurred to me that any of those decorations might have racist undertones.”

In other words, she was smart back then. She’s since, evidently, become goofier.

Let me just say: Halloween is partly about horror. You know all those decorations? They’re mostly all dead. Dead is worse than hung. Dead is worse than anything. Because dead is dead. If you want Halloween to only be happy, celebrate Valentine’s Day on October 31st. Give your significant other a BIG OL’ SMOOCH. And hang hearts. Wait — no, don’t hang them. Uh…actually, I don’t know what to do.

Back to ghouls and goblins — there’s a different gauge we need to apply to Halloween decorations, because it’s…Halloween.

Nevertheless according to NPR:

“Hanging anything with a noose conjures up a legacy that continues to haunt us today.”

As for roped skeletons, Mayowa Aina quotes Tananarive Due, a University of California “black horror scholar”:

“Just because it’s Halloween doesn’t mean that we can forget the visual impact of lynching imagery.”

Perhaps Due has never seen a Western. There’s a whole lot of hangin’ in them there movies. Hangin’ of white folks.

For a long time, hanging was the capital punishment of choice. And it’s a disgusting thought. But, Halloween.

Our nation does indeed have a shameful history of victimizing innocent black people. It’s worth discussing, and it deserves denouncement. On to — it seems to me — a completely different topic: This is Halloween.

Yet, as for Due’s prescription for the headache of being a spooky racist, spider webs are your friend:

“She suggests using spider webs instead of rope,” Aina wrote. “You could even sit the skeleton up in a tree so it looks like someone died and decomposed while sitting in that spot.”

So ya got it? Hang skeletons with spider webs. And don’t dress as another race. And don’t dress as an oppressive character. So maybe don’t be white. And resist triggering your neighbors with any presentation of toxic masculinity. And please don’t further the myth of cisgenderism. If you’re a non-binary martian, that might be good. Or we could perhaps just relax a bit, and celebrate Halloween. While the offended Left persist in being Halloweenies.

Relevant RedState links in this article: here and here.

See 3 more pieces from me: Comedy Central & a murderous wish, Hillary Clinton & slavery, and the end of problems.

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