Few things are more cringe-inducing than blackface. For a group of University of Toronto students, that's the most recent lesson learned.

At a Halloween party on Oct. 29, a Trinidadian student and four white friends decided to dress up as the Jamaican bobsled team from the 1993 kitsch film Cool Runnings.

They wore brightly coloured tracksuits, one dreadlocks wig and Jamaican flag T-shirts. Oh, and face paint: for the black student, posing as the coach played by John Candy, thick white clown makeup. For the white students, brown foundation slightly darker than George Hamilton's self-tanner.

The day after the party, torontoist.com posted a photo of the group, kicking off a heated comment section debate on satire and tribute. Criticism centred on the notion that the bobsled team had apparently won a costume prize.

"There wasn't voting or any rationale or best costume award," says Deryn Robson, a South Asian student at St. Michael's College, who organizes events like the Halloween gathering for 1,500 at Mansion Bar and Wet Lounge. Robson, who went as Mickey Mouse, says that after every party, he sends his mailing list a bunch of photos. This time, he singled out group costumes he thought were fun.

But the U of T's Black Students' Association wanted official apologies from the three colleges that threw the party.

Halloween is exuberantly tasteless, which usually slides until there's an accusation of racism. Target, Walgreen and eBay pulled an "illegal alien" costume from the shelves this year, after an immigrants' rights group objected to the alien mask attached to a bright orange prisoner's jumpsuit. The blog Angry Asian Man does an annual roundup of offensive gear, such as an exaggerated rubber face mask dubbed Fee Ling You.

Thoughtful depictions of blackface (think Bamboozled or Tropic Thunder) have recently been considered worthwhile commentary. In a defence posted on torontoist.com, the U of T group said the costume was a specific tribute to a movie that played "a large part in our childhoods."

But Sanelifo Moyo, social chair for the Black Students' Association, says their costumes were too undefined to be taken seriously. "In no way did their costumes represent the Jamaican bobsled team."

"If you ask 50 different people, they'll all see 50 different things," says Stephen Johnson, a professor at U of T who has studied blackface and minstrelsy for 20 years.

Johnson says that while actors and costume-wearers want to invoke specific characters, viewers who have had racist experiences could be legitimately hurt or offended.

The Black Students' Association and other student groups organized a Tuesday night town hall meeting on the uproar. Some 250 students turned up for a quick lesson on the history of blackface from U of T professors, followed by a discussion. The bobsled group was there and submitted an apology.

Robson wasn't bothered by the Cool Runnings getup, saying the fivesome are being "unfairly pegged as racist."

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