Interestingly I saw a video recently where a group of black men and one white guy were blindfolded and they were trying to ask questions to figure out who was the odd one out. Ironically they failed and it turned out the white guy had been adopted by a black woman and grew up in Compton (a predominantly black community) so he "identified" with a lot of the aspects of life even those on the panel viewed as "the black experience"

Of course that's not to dismiss the very real difficulties that many people face but it does show how malleable our sense of culture can be. I don't know what the answer is these questions should be but I find it difficult to believe that it's healthy for anyone's sense of self worth to focus on how marginalized they have been. Absolutely, recognize the difficulties you have experienced but seek to grow and overcome them through action and connecting with other people who can provide support.

Racism sucks but putting up barriers to meaningful conversation isn't going to make things better

I understand that historically there have been social aspects that have been co-opted away from the black community, but at a certain point I feel confused about what the goal is supposed to be with pointing it out in forms like this. It's a meme based on Oprah's facial expressions. If we have to not do anything that was/is from a different culture that our own then we're going to find ourselves with some very troubling implications. Should only those with British heritage speak English? Should only those who are Arabic use numbers? Of course these are absurd questions but I really don't see how complaining about people using a meme does anything to push against real harm caused by actual malicious racism

One thing to remember specifically with high quality leather boots is to keep up with the maintenance. I personally have a pair of iron rangers I use for work so they've gotten a lot of use and if I slack off it will not work out in the long run.

One metric I use to decide if a price is right is to divide the expected lifetime of the thing by the cost. $800 Nick's vs $70 Converse: 20+ years (with proper care) vs 2 years (maybe?), So cost/yr is $40 vs $35 which makes the initial gut punch price much less painful but the remaining question is if you trust yourself to put in the effort to properly take care of the boots in a way you (or I for that matter) would care for a pair of Converse