Writing for the Huffington Post, Nicholas Pierce argued that wearing a “colorful sombrero” on Halloween is the equivalent of dressing up as a pilot who was murdered on 9/11 or as a cancer patient.

Pierce’s article, titled Your Holiday Is $#*%, and Your Costume Is Racist, imagines that you have a friend named “Todd” who wants to dress up on Halloween.

“If Todd,” Pierce writes, “goes out on October 31st wearing a poncho and colorful sombrero (and your friend Todd is not from Central America) then your friend Todd is a racist.”

Todd might not know how extremely racist he is, the article says, because “we white folk are particularly insensitive because we don’t have a lot to be sensitive about.” Thus, Pierce says, as a “white person,” he feels obligated to explain “an appropriate analogy.”

Wearing a sombrero, he details, is like dressing “up as Todd’s Mom on Chemotherapy” (emphasis his). “Because of our aforementioned lack of oppression,” Pierce continues, “we are often blinded to how our behavior impacts others.”

Another equivalent to wearing a sombrero? Mocking 9/11 victims.

“Another analogy,” Pierce continues. “9/11 happened to all of us, and it stands out starkly for those of a particular age (likely Todd’s age). If I went to a Halloween party dressed as a pilot with a box cutter sticking out of my forehead and cheerfully told you that I’m pretending to be the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, you would probably be pissed.”

In the end, if you wear that sombrero, you are a racist. “First,” Pierce concludes, “he (Todd) encourages whatever absurd stereotype is the theme of his attire, and second, he shows the world that white people are deaf to the suffering of others. And when Todd does this it gives cause to not-white-folks to righteously employ that word we hate so much: racist.”