#714. Trick or Treating

On the 31st of October, children dress in their ghoulish best and go forth in their respective towns to knock on neighbors doors in hopes on receiving delicious treats.

Trick or Treating is the ultimate source of community building - a fact Mein Obama should have taken into consideration during his days as a community organizer in Chicago - for parents sending their children alone into the night is not a common practice for people who live on the other side of the tracks or in rough where crime is rampant.

Obviously, Whitopia's are the worst area for Trick or Treating to occur, for the hallmark of these cities is the high amount of crime and disunity that follows white people wherever they go. Wait, Whitopia's are the cities that offer the best places for children to safely Trick or Treat, without fear of molestation or gang rape.

Where does Trick or Treating come from, you might ask? Is it part of the Out of Africa theory, the continent where anything and everything good and decent has originated. To be frank, no. It comes from that dour continent where only evil, blue-eyed devils were conceived, and it is these Ice People who came up with the oustanding tradition of community building through the honesty-inducing practice of sending children out into the night unsupervised:

"Trick-or-treating is a custom for children on Halloween. Children proceed in costume from house to house, asking for treats such as candy, or sometimes money, with the question, "Trick or treat?" The "trick"is an idle threat to perform mischief on the homeowners or their property, such as eggs and flour being thrown at householders windows if no treat is given....

The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays dates back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmas wassailing. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of souling, when poor folk would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1), receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2). It originated in Ireland and Britain, although similar practices for the souls of the dead were found as far south as Italy.

Shakespeare mentions the practice in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona
(1593), when Speed accuses his master of "puling [whimpering or whining] like a
beggar at Hallowmas."

The custom of wearing costumes and masks at Halloween goes back to Celtic traditions of attempting to copy the evil spirits or placate them, in Scotland for instance where the dead were impersonated by young men with masked, veiled or blackened faces, dressed in white."

Interestingly, Trick or Treating is practiced in most European countries, as well as Australia and the United States, but little knowledge of the tradition being celebrated in Africa is documented. Perhaps African people employ the Trick method much more frequently then the Treat method, as evidenced by the interesting career of Robert Mugabe and the white farmers of Zimbabwe.

Again, it is in Robert Putnam's study on diversity that we understand the truth of why Trick or Treating is a phenomenon in only Whitopia's, for the idea that children being safe to explore the vast cityscape of Washington DC, Memphis, New York City, downtown Atlanta or Richmond High School in California alone is a hard pill to swallow:

Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, is very nervous about releasing his new research, and understandably so. His five-year study shows that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities.

Putnam’s study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn’t ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

In the 41 sites Putnam studied in the U.S., he found that the more
diverse the neighborhood, the less residents trust neighbors. This proved true
in communities large and small, from big cities like Los Angeles, Chicago,
Houston, and Boston to tiny Yakima, Washington, rural South Dakota, and the
mountains of West Virginia. In diverse San Francisco and Los Angeles, about 30
percent of people say that they trust neighbors a lot. In ethnically homogeneous
communities in the Dakotas, the figure is 70 percent to 80 percent.

Diversity does not produce “bad race relations,” Putnam says. Rather, people in diverse communities tend “to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.” Putnam adds a crushing footnote: his findings “may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal.”

Few words are needed to elaborate on why the practice of Trick or Treating will die out in the America of 2042 then the ones that preceded this sentence, for Putnam's study is a damning critique of the future of Trick or Treating. The practice will be forced to seek refuge in Whitopia's and forever remain a holiday that acts as an immutable bond for white children to understand their attachments to their community.

Sadly, the joys of diversity will never come to Trick or Treating. For if Diversity is our Strength, then Trick or Treating should be a shared practice in all communities:

"Two-thirds of parents say their children will trick-or-treat this Halloween, but fewer minorities will let their kids go door to door, with some citing safety worries, a poll shows.

The survey found that 73 percent of whites versus 56 percent of minorities said their children will trick-or-treat on Wednesday.

That disparity in the survey is similar to the difference in how people view the safety of their neighborhoods, according to the poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos. Lower-income people and minorities are more likely to worry that it might not be safe to send their children out on Halloween night."

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes Trick or Treating, for this practice is just too white to bring into the Black community and can only work in cities that have a solid amount of trust and altruistic-sense of pride in their citizens.

In a phrase, Trick or Treating is just too much of an Acting White proposition for Black people to add to their lives.

For next year, utilize Zillow.com, an excellent website that has tabulated the best places in major cities to Trick or Treat for kids, based on a variety of variables, including safety:

"The folks at Zillow.com have created their first Trick or Treat Housing Index, which draws on the site’s real estate data to determine the top-five neighborhoods in Seattle and Los Angeles to maximize candy intake this Saturday.

"How’d they do that? “There is a common belief that wealthy neighborhoods are the Holy Grail for harvesting the most Halloween candy,” blogs Zillow’s Whitney Tyner. But to provide what it calls a more holistic approach, Zillow factored in home values alongside additional data on population density, neighborhood walkability, and local crime. “Based on those variables, this Index represents neighborhoods that will provide the most candy, with the least walking, and minimum safety risks,” she wrote."