I feel that a certain small number of people in society take themselves way too seriously. And these can be people from any racial, religious, cultural, economic, or sexual orientation background-- there are people with sticks permanently up their behinds from all backgrounds. It is true that people of many different backgrounds have been targeted for horrible attacks and injustices in the past, and there is nothing wrong with trying to be sensitive to that. However, at the same time, the people in these groups need to realize that not every single thing that is said or done is meant to be some sort of malicious attack or injustice being target towards them.
At the same time, people from these groups also have to be conscious of the realities of their people's histories-- I am constantly flabbergasted when I hear things brought up in the news about how Italian-American groups are speaking out against television shows like The Sapranos because they show Italians acting like gangsters, or from Arab-American communities that are upset because a terrorist-villain of a television show or movie was shown to be an Arabian Muslim, or even one of the examples given in the article that you linked to where people got upset about others dressing up in sombreros and ponchos because that is stereotypically Mexican, etc. Well hey, guess what-- there were many Italians who actually were high-profile gangsters throughout American history, anyone who followed the news from about the 1970's onwards knows that there are a small group of Muslims that have performed high-profile terrorist acts, and sombreros and ponchos (or more technically a "serape") are part of the traditional dress of some regions of Mexico. I am sorry if you don't like others remembering those aspects of your particular group's own past, but they are part of your history and they are part of the public's consciousness, so you can't be surprised if those images then end up in popular culture. Those are just the breaks.
Halloween is often about dressing up as a caricature of someone else for the sake of fun. Caricatures, by their very nature, exaggerate or distort the essence of what they are trying to portray in order to be easily recognizable to others. Since sombreros and serapes are easily recognized to be of Mexican origin, if you want to dress up like Pancho Villa, a notorious figure from Mexican history, you are going to wear a sombrero and serape so that people know who you are trying to portray.
People need to learn how to take these kinds of small things in stride. People need to focus on the big injustices of this world an not sweat the small stuff such as Halloween costumes that are meant for fun. We all need to learn how to laugh at ourselves and not see everything as some kind of insult. I think that society would be a much happier place if everyone was free to make fun of everyone else in good spirits equally. Then we can all have a good laugh, pat each other on the back for the good jokes, and move on. This whole idea of "political correctness" on steroids where everyone has to tip-toe on glass all of the time just in case they say or do something that may be found to be offensive to somebody somewhere just makes everything miserable to everyone, and causes unnecessary tension in our society.
