What peter is saying is, that the book follows a very, very tight third person point of view of Harry himself. We see what he sees and thinks, and no one else. If Harry didn't know about gay students at Hogwarts, then neither did we.
I Am Not Amelia Pond
iamavoiceinterface
The lack of LGBT representation means there were no LGBT characters. This isn't a documentary of real people - the characters represented in the book are what is in the story. They don't have lives beyond the page - what is represented is what we have, and what was represented was a whole lot of cis, straight people.
As another white person — honestly, from this answer it sounds like sadsweaterowner is right — but I wouldn't take it as an insult. Stay with me...
Think about the origins of guilt. Guilt is a conflict between two things: who you want believe you are, and who you perceive yourself to be.
You would like to believe you…
Every time I read an article explaining how white people who think they are helping really aren't... this is the response from so many white people. "I don't know what to do then, maybe I should just do nothing?" If we stay inactive with the excuse of "not accidentally making things worse," we're letting the racist…
I don't know what to do with good white people.
So, let's say you're a tiny Vermont-based company that wants to print and sell t-shirts that encourage kale…
In this case it's pretty much that she turned them into props. Obviously none of us can judge whether or not she genuinely appreciated the Harajuku culture, but she used them as a commodity rather than giving them an active role. The whole thing comes off as "oh look at these kooky creatures from the Orient that I, a…
Okay here is another example: Back in the 1950's and 60's Black musical artists made music. But yet on TV is was white people performing their songs and collecting checks for their songs while the Black artists were banned from performing on TV and radio. Also, this was legal and considered the norm. Now, you could…
The beginning really of the discussion of cultural appropriation is Edward Said's Orientalism, published back in 1978. His argument is that performance like this is all about taking the eastern, "other" cultural and using it to make the white performer/artist look sexy, exotic and cool. The non-white character or…
Outside of the context of Gwen & the Harajuku girls for a sec: due to a series of coincidences that happened in my freshman year of college, a lot of my friends are either Indian or Indian American. I know that I'm white, can't speak for someone else's culture, and individuals from a culture can't speak for their…
Wanna hear something else awesome? It worked!
To me, "cultural appropriation" happens when somebody takes from a culture without context. The Harajuku Girls, as I understand them, were some kind of homage to stylized Japanese teen girl culture, particularly the way they dress. Which really isn't that bad. However, I remember Margaret Cho pointing out that they…
: Maybe a man with a history of race-based hate crimes should ~not~ be a police officer.
Actually, at a recent protest(i believe in NYC), cops used the fact that protesters will immediately break apart for ambulances to shove a load of cops(in ambulance) through them. Protesters of this ilk want to save lives, and tend not to prioritize their protest above people possibly dying.
For the most part the Ambulance would use the shoulder and most protestors would get out of the way for ambulances (unless they are complete dicks).
I'm glad the kids are getting involved just hope people stay safe walking in the street....wouldn't want to see a kid injured.
As one of the few adults that honked in solidarity with the kids as I was blocked on Broadway this morning, I would also like to mention there were a tremendous amount of signs promoting feminism/gender equality/equal pay/etc in addition to Mike Brown/Eric Garner/Tamir Rice.
This is wonderful! A couple months ago students in JeffCo (the county over from Denver) walked out because of revisionist plans for the AP US History curriculum. Colorado's future is wonderfully blue.
Students at Denver's South High School staged a walkout in solidarity with protesters across the country on Monday.