By Morgan Rowland
A recurring fear of American Adults during halloween time is that some big, bad, benevolent stranger is going to try to poison or scar your kids. But what if I told you it isn’t true? That there have been no confirmed deaths from candy related causes around halloween? Would you be surprised? You wouldn’t be the only one, most every person who’s ever gone trick-or-treating has memories of your parents telling you not to eat any of your candy until they check it. Now, a certain degree of caution is reasonable for any parent to have when it comes to what their kids eat but this fear of halloween candy is largely baseless. This fear is based in the fear of the “other.” Of someone unlike you and those that you know who simply on the basis of this difference want to cause you, and your kids, harm. This idea became an incredibly prevalent fear amongst white and suburban Americans during the 1960s and 70s when marginalized groups, specifically Black people, started gaining rights. This White American fear of the other has been used to justify everythings to segregation and redlining to discriminatory immigration policies like the Chinese Exclusion act of 1882. But as previously stated there have been NO deaths as a result of Halloween candy. This isn’t to say that people haven’t tried to hurt people with halloween candy but there necessary nuance to those situations.
In 1959 a dentist gave kids laxatives as halloween treats; in 1964 an angry woman gave teenagers where they thought were too old to be trick-or-treating inedible things like dog biscuits, steel wool, and poison ant buttons. These are all awful but they 1.) happened years ago and 2.) are the actions of mean people with very specific motives behind their actions. It is highly unlikely that some rando in your local suburbs is going to try to poison little Johnny down the road without a specific reason which most people aren’t going to have. But also poisoning kids this way is an illogical crime.
If you poison someone it’s probably because they want to cause pain and/or death; they want to see it happen. If you poison someone with halloween candy then you’re probably not going to see your handiwork come to play which would defeat the whole point. The kid would eat the candy at home and there’s no way to know for sure that what you did is the cause of their illness. Not to mention that every year thousands of pounds of candy go uneaten and tossed in the garbage so if you put rat poison in the snickers all you're gonna get is a possum foaming at the mouth. Gross.
I understand that being a parent can be scary and wanting to do everything that you can to keep your kids safe but this idea of “razor blades in the apple” is a racist myth that plays on the fear of white suburban parents to make them distrusting everyone who isn’t them. This directly plays into the racism and racial profiling that Black people experience. Black people are painted as the perpetual criminal, always doing something wrong to somebody. If you combine that with suburban fear, it’s a toxic combination. This all to say to be conscious of what you believe, what myths you spread and what candy you eat. Not because of drugs or razors though, Laffy Taffy is just gross.
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