Please, please, PLEASE remember that Houston wasn’t the only city affected by this storm. There were so many small towns who were impacted and they aren’t getting the same amount of press. (I understand why so please don’t get on me about that, okay?) So please donate to organizations who are helping all Harvey…

My niece in Tomball is organizing gift cards for locals, for groceries, fast food, home improvement, clothing, shoes etc...she is a guidance counselor so she is working with her school system. Also any Tx-based animal rescue, shelters, etc will need lots of $ and help for a long time.

Also, while there are a lot of good charities connecting people with things they need, also consider donating to organizations that provide legal/social work services. People will need legal assistance to obtain access to FEMA relief, insurance collection, and basic things like obtaining replacement IDs/birth…

Want to plug an organization I volunteer for. Texas Wildlife Rehab Center here in Houston. They took in the famous cab hawk.

Please, do your research on whatever you decide to donate to. Sites like charitynavigator.org are independent non profits themselves who review charities.

Sometimes it feels like they don’t even think about their cause, they just know it is what Republicans are supposed to do to keep the base in line so they do it. Because they certainly don’t want to provide for the children or the women they discard when they are done with them. Literally nothing about outlawing…

Not AG Ken Paxton.

Oh I’m sure Greg Abbott, Ken Paxton and Texas Republicans will soon redouble their efforts to restrict reproductive rights, ban sanctuary cities and pass regressive transgender bathroom laws.

Wang = pretty Chinese woman

Not to mention that she did her “blackening” in order to take advantage of a scholarship opportunity earmarked for black students.

I went to Kyoto and there are a large number of companies there who will dress you up in traditional costume for a day. You can dress up in a nice kimono, but for a higher price, you can dress up like a maiko or geiko. Any geishas you would meet in the streets would actually be dressed up tourists. I went and dressed…

That’s an important point. There’s something to be said for the concept of “tastelessness.” It’s rude and in poor taste to appropriate cultural elements, pry them out of their original setting (like the Elgin marbles) and oversimplify them. An extreme example is (maybe 10 years ago?) there were violent, racist attacks…

Because at the end of the day, people want to pick up the fun parts, discard the worky parts, and forget that they are culpable for any of the mess.

dolezal is a completely separate question, i think. she’s not trying to appropriate anything - she’s trying to literally claim blackness as hers, to say she has a right to all of it by nature. essentially, she’s putting on blackface and then saying that a white woman living her entire life in blackface is the same as…

I’m not familiar with that specific case, but it’s not great if it creates less room for original artists.

Where’s Rachel Dolezal on this spectrum? She desperately wants to “live and breathe” the culture.

I think she means this though specifically in an American context. Japanese citizens probably wouldn’t be offended by someone in a geisha costume because they’re not a minority group. Japanese Americans on the other hand might have a different experience because they are a minority group.

“A lot of people don’t get that they don’t make the rules about things that belong to other people. And when you tell them they’re not entitled to that, well, they won’t fucking hear it.”

There’s an interesting notion I see a lot among self-entitled white folks that they should have the same freedoms as children. That’s bizarre to me. For one... no. But really, we don’t get the same freedom as children because adulthood is by nature an existence of responsibility. Responsibility is at its core a…

Exactly this. I’m Indian and I have met a few non-South Asians (usually white or black people) who studied Bharatanatyam (classical South Indian dance) for many years, studied under Indian gurus, lived and danced in India, and hold great reverence for the dance. That’s not cultural appropriation, that’s having a deep…