When last we discussed nerds, Mary Bucholtz pissed y'all off by calling Nerdness a style of hyperwhiteness. Well, I got something for the other side.
It is no stretch to say that the internet is alive with various honey pots of black nerdery. Andre Meadows vlogs from his gremlin-infested bedroom in Los Angeles, while the Black Nerds Network holds forth across the pond. And if dorks are allowed to join the fray, then then the online culture magazine, um, dork magazine, might also serve compelling notice that the trend itself enjoys a cresting momentum.
I'm going to have to follow some of those links, think about it for a while.
Black Nerds: The Revolution No One Could Have Predicted
by Raafi Rivero
On a late weekend night, two days before the release of the much-anticipated Microsoft video game Halo 3, a group of 8-to-10 black nerds in their late teens walks down the Bowery, their conversation animated. The leader of the pack, his Ben Wallace afro in full bloom, turns to the others, “Master Chief is… the Jack Bauer of… the Halo universe!” The pack, each member clambering to respond in the affirmative before the others, turns into a burger joint.
The rise of the black nerd has been a blustery and uneven process characterized by large gains and deep swoons. Presaged by Clarence Gilyard Jr.’s portrayal of Theo, the computer ace who hacks into the building vault in the classic film Die Hard, the nerd who is possessed wholly of a black American masculinity is a specific character that enjoys a renaissance today even as the hip-hop world continues to project a
grotesque opposite. The broadening media landscape, however, allows us greater access to
pulse of black America even as the mainstream media seems to be stuck on stupid infatuated with the images of black males that (used to) sell records.
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Cryptonomicon
I missed the original post unitl now, and I haven't read Mary Bucholtz's work, but it really reminds me of a passage in this Neal Stephenson book, Cryptonomicon:
http://books.google.com/books?id=FUha9wJrSXMC&pg=PA77&dq=%22beard+work%22+
cryptonomicon&ei=q_EKR-GOBI-8pgKw9_zSCA&sig=zNs-NP5pYzt87TpQflMAvg2zyOA#PPA77,M1
Yay google book search! pages 76-77.
Really hilarious. The main character is a nerd, who has beard, and his girlfriend is academia (sociology, i think). She undertakes a study of what beards mean.
"In short order, Charlene proved that having a beard was just one element of a syndrome strongly correlated to racist and sexist attitudes, and to the pattern of emotional unavailability so often bemoaned by the female partners of white males, especially ones who were technologically oriented."
It's a great book, especially if you're a nerd.
Offbeat article, but I like it.
Give me
No Morpheus?
In all of Rivero's article, not one mention of Fishburne's portrayal of Morpheus in The Matrx?
Morpheus is a nerd's hero,
Morpheus is a nerd's hero, but is he a nerd?
Nerd. Nerd's hero.
Close enough.
On the subject of Morpheus.
P6, since I brought up the Morpheus character in the Matrix, let me pose this one to you:
As interesting as the Morpheus character was, the writers still didn't manage to break out of the predictable Hollywood pattern of casting the main black character as the facilitator of a white character's journey of self-discovery.
Can you name some of your favorite movies or characters that succeed in this regard?
Actually, no. I'm not that
Actually, no. I'm not that big on movies, and lean toward the science fiction/fantasy genre anyway. It's easier for me NOT to invest terrestrial race identity on aliens than it is for me to NOT judge Thomas Jefferson to be a racist of current understanding.