Is your kid’s Moana Halloween costume racist?

As Halloween creeps closer, parents are putting the finishing touches on decorations, packing their candy bowls and helping their kids make costume decisions. But a fiery debate about one of America’s most popular costume ideas is roiling the internet right now.

What if your child isn’t a Pacific islander, but wants to dress up as Moana, the fierce Polynesian Disney princess?

Some say that could be insensitive or even racist.

A blogger named Sarchi Feris published an article on RaceConscious.org, a website that promotes raising children with an awareness of racial social issues, and writes about how her 5-year-old daughter wanted to dress up as the magical Disney princess Moana for Halloween. In the movie “Moana,” the title character is a Polynesian princess who must save her island from an evil blight that threatens to destroy their home. It is based on an old tale of the trickster Maui in Polynesian culture.

“If we are going to dress up a real person, we have to make sure we are doing it in a way that is respectful. Otherwise, it is like we are making fun of someone else’s culture,” Feris wrote that she told her daughter.

She wrote that she thought about using traditional Polynesian clothes as a learning experience, but ultimately couldn’t figure out a way that didn’t feel like “laughing at” Moana’s character’s culture. “A child whose family is Polynesian could dress up using that type of traditional clothing but Moana’s culture is not our culture,” she told her daughter, who eventually decided to go as Micky Mouse instead, Feris wrote.

An editorial from Redbook magazine supporting Feris was republished in Cosmopolitan and argued that any child dressing up as Moana who wasn’t from the Pacific Islands was being culturally insensitive.

“If you missed the mark when you were younger, maybe think about using this Halloween as an opportunity to teach your kids about the importance of cultural sensitivity,” they write. “If your Caucasian son or daughter doesn't get to be exactly what they wanted for Halloween, encourage them to take a step back and realize that they're awash in privileges that the real Moanas and Tianas (the black Disney princess from “The Princess and the Frog”) of the world will likely never see.”

This isn’t the first time a Moana costume has been controversial. Last year, a different Moana-themed costume was pulled from shelves after complaints that it came uncomfortably close to showing kids in blackface.

Critics have responded sharply to the Cosmopolitan article, with Robby Soave from Reason Magazine calling the idea “joy-killing, curiosity-shaming, (and) inclusion-discouraging,” and Kyle Smith of National Review asserted “almost no one will be offended (if a child wears a Moana costume), and if anyone is, it’ll be the kinds of people who are offended by everything, all of the time.”

On Twitter, many are still wrestling with the question. Some agreed with the original articles and said they did not support children dressing up as Moana if they were not a part of Polynesian culture. Others were unsure and were looking for opinions.

Others found the idea less than convincing.

Disney has not commented on the debate.

This story was originally published October 25, 2017 at 12:29 PM with the headline "Is your kid’s Moana Halloween costume racist?."