"In an American imagination that has historically stereotyped Black people as alternately ignorant and emotional or sexualized and cool, the nerd — smart and cerebral, unsexy and decidedly uncool — creates cognitive dissonance. Not only do Black nerds confound racist stereotypes, they also pierce the protective orthodoxy of Blackness passed down in the United States across generations. Under slavery and Jim Crow, Black people maintaining — or at least projecting — unity proved a necessary protective practice. Strength came in numbers, as did political influence and economic clout. What would happen if we all announced publicly that we were going to start doing our own human thing without regard to the group? Few considered it worth the risk to find out. But who in 2021 benefits from thinking of Black people as just one thing? Certainly not Black individuals, who, like all individuals, are complex amalgams of shifting affinities, of inherited and chosen identities. And certainly not Black nerds, whose very existence is often rendered invisible because they present an inconvenient complication to a straightforward story of Blackness in America..."
From "The Black Nerds Redefining the Culture/By pushing back against centuries-old stereotypes, a historically overlooked community is claiming space it was long denied" by Adam Bradley (NYT).
I learned the slang term: "blerd."
Posts
166 comments:
Breaking out of the "ghetto", eh? YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
Out: Acting White. In: Acting Asian.
The sound of Nigerian "quants" laughing.
Blacks being obsessed with being black is the one stereotype that is always true. The rest of us don't really care.
Cultural appropriation.
I am Laslo.
"American imagination" = leftist writers at the NYT projecting bias to what they think people west of the Hudson think
That article took a surprising number of paragraphs to mention Steve Urkel. I was starting to think it would intentionally avoid that character.
Louis Lefebvre, a behaviorist at McGill University in Montreal who is studying bird intelligence, has developed a test for gauging bird IQ. It’s based on how innovative birds are when faced with different challenges. His winner for the smartest bird of all is the American Crow (also called the Common Crow), and many other researchers agree.
Jump Jim Crow
Everybody knows there are black nerds, but they are gay and named Lamar.
"What would happen if we all announced publicly that we were going to start doing our own human thing without regard to the group?"
You will be labeled as White African-Americans, and also white supremacist domestic terrorists.
Who actually ever believed there's a monolithic blackness?
Same people who now believe there's a monolithic whiteness?
Limited Perspective @ 9:29: “
Blacks being obsessed with being black is the one stereotype that is always true. The rest of us don't really care.”
Pretty much this. I have made a diligent search for a f*** to give, but have come up empty.
Long time ago I worked with a black chemist who knew more about explosive chains and PALs than anyone I'd ever met. Dude was a genius but in daily life he was as ghetto culturally as any inner city hoodrat. Literally fit all the stereotypes, and it seemed to me at the time that he was going to a lot of trouble to do so. I never worked up the gall to ask him why he tried so hard to fit a "mold". In hindsight I suspect he did it to keep from getting hassled as a poindexter or erkle in the hood.
"In an American imagination that has historically stereotyped Black people as alternately ignorant and emotional or sexualized and cool, . . ."
Is Bradley describing his imagination? The imagination of people he knows? The imagination of people he doesn't know?
I'm trying to put a face on this "American imagination."
The biggest purveyor of stereotypes is the entertainment industry.
Octavia Bulter suggests this has been around a while
Bob Boyd writes:
"Louis Lefebvre, a behaviorist at McGill University in Montreal who is studying bird intelligence, has developed a test for gauging bird IQ. It’s based on how innovative birds are when faced with different challenges. His winner for the smartest bird of all is the American Crow (also called the Common Crow), and many other researchers agree.
"Jump Jim Crow."
But don't forget Jim Eagle! Trunalimunumaprzure!
The idea of monolithic Blackness is a yet again a racist aspect OF THE LEFT.
The stereotyping of blacks is often by those who never grew up among them.
But don't forget Jim Eagle!
Joe Turkey
Just like the LEFT treats all Spanish-peoples as one - the worst being Latinx - when aside from language, there is diversity and quite a lot of dislike between the various nationalities.
And same with Far East Asians. Hollywood is certainly among the worst when it comes to that.
Biden Bros!... https://twitter.com/i/status/1374823014777434123 from Uncle Hotep
I'm not the one that ever believed blacks were monolithic. That would be Democratics
Didn't Michelle-my-belle, tell a reporter that polls showing young black males tepid support of the great-one would be OK, because those black males would come into line...because they are black?
There are Black set asides right? Because of lived experience? All Blacks have the same lived experience. VP Harris and Justice Thomas are both Black* and have the same lived experience, so I have been lectured.
*Harris may have morphed to Asian, since Boulder, shut up and stop asking stupid questions.
People who invented a movement so they could treat white children as racist oppressors are now criticizing others for not treating people as individuals - even though they seem to make up that this is even happening.
At Comic-Cons, Black cosplayers are sometimes chastised by officious gatekeepers, told that their chosen characters aren’t supposed to be Black
Does he reject "cultural appropriation" generally? Or are blacks held immune the way the left pretends racism works?
The fetishization of the other. They cannot help themselves.
So, people are people. Who knew?
Monolithic blackness is not a "myth", it's a political narrative.
Blogger BUMBLE BEE said...
The stereotyping of blacks is often by those who never grew up among them.
Yes! Such a person could even believe that they are incapable of obtaining an ID to vote. This simple act is simply too tall a mountain to climb.
People can be individuals?
That can't be right.
Well, thank goodness, we still have the monolithic Hispanics...
Nerd... as differentiated from the evil tech-geek in Die Hard?
"Evil, black tech-geek scares people!"
A black nerd isn't socially entwined enough to know he's being held back by anybody so you never hear from him.
This isn't news to anyone except the racists at the NY Times.
His winner for the smartest bird of all is the American Crow (also called the Common Crow), and many other researchers agree.
An experiment years ago showed that crows can count to four. It involved hunters hiding in a barn. Classic experiment.
Has Bradley not partaken of any popular culture during the last 50 years? The smart Black nerd is a stock character, just like the older Black woman of surpassing wisdom.
The crow is the blerd of birds.
The first time I heard of John McWhorter (a linguist/black intellectual) was on MTV back in the 90's. He was speaking out against Ebonics. My impression now is he has backed off and has a less rigid stand when it comes to so called "black English."
Obama might have started out like John McWhorter, but choosing politics pretty much meant he had to go with the stablished order, the way a black politician (counting on the black vote) rises.
Was Colin Powell a nerd starting out?
Can you see where I'm goin with this?
From around the turn of the century to about the late 60s and 70s, there were vast elements of Black culture that were thriving and vibrant. Racists like Bradley might think of them as all shucking and jiving, but in science, education, the arts, business, they were booming -- all in the midst of REAL oppression.
Then when the left White Saviors came around to entice them back to the Plantation with eternal grievances and entitlement and government dependency, that thriving Black culture began to recede more and more.
Sure, Blacks as individuals and within families could still have the freedom to excel on their own merits and hard-work and self-determination. Some still maintained the idea of self-empowerment, but too many have firmly embraced learned helplessness and blaming others and other fallacies of the left.
And don't get me started on the divide between African-Americans -- i.e. U.S. born Blacks -- and African Blacks.
There's a mixed-race guy in my extended family who the one-drop rule classifies as Black. In his law practice he speaks White Midwestern English, and when called upon to he speaks Black. For extra credit, because he's Gay, he can speak That Way, too. I am assured that lots of Black people are fluent in more than one manner of speech.
My public elementary school in Philadelphia was integrated in 1978 when I was in 4th grade and a good bit of the class, black and white, stay in touch to this day.
All the DIY punk/indie concerts were attended by fans of all backgrounds - black kids in DK shirts were caught diving off the stage by white kids in Bad Brains shirts.
The only people consistently obsessed with race are boujie white "progressives" desperate for cred, carrying some weird guilt about their own affluence (which they never actually sacrifice one shred of), and who buy into the most crude, one-dimensional, patronizing stereotypes about other races in often cringeworthy, embarrassing ways.
Every Sunday at the corner of an upper class Quaker school in the suburbs, a throng of lily-white people stand holding BLM signs for approving honks from passing cars. I pulled up one day and asked why they don't do their display in North Philadelphia where actual black people would see them. I was called an asshole and chased off.
.
Acting White
Anyone remember this little piece of Black culture from the 80s/90s? A lot of promising kids lost their way due to the social pressure to dump academics. Those who did escape that culture look back at the isolation and loneliness which came from being a Black Nerd.
Goddamn shame.
My public elementary school in Philadelphia was integrated in 1978
1978 - bolded twice for emphasis - was two decades after the South was ordered to do so. Once again, it is a one-party Democrat locality where the deep-seated racism existed.
"In an American imagination that has historically stereotyped Black people as alternately ignorant and emotional or sexualized and cool, . . ."
This sentence really bothers me. Does the "American imagination" exist only in the minds of white people? Only middle class white people?
What a sleazeball of hack Adam Bradley is.
Per my comment in an earlier post today: there are no rights without individual rights. There are no people who are not individuals. Stop pretending masses of people all think and act alike. They do not and never will. And declaring it so in the NY Times or from Pres. Jim Eagle does not make it so.
Biden's type of talk is the most racist thing there is. That Black Americans cannot figure out how to vote so they need extra days, no IDs, meals in line, and of course, multiple attempts at it. Jeez Louise. That's beyond racist. It's psychotic.
"Once again, it is a one-party Democrat locality where the deep-seated racism existed."
You'd be hard-pressed to find a more racially segregated city than Philadelphia around that time. In my lily-white working class mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood black people were almost exclusively referred to by a word that begins with "n." My parents wouldn't have that and raised their kids not to be that way. I stayed in the school, made friends, and learned valuable life lessons between experience and parental lessons - STARTING AT THE AGE OF 8 IF NOT YOUNGER! So frankly, these late to the party experts and activists on issues of race, especially the white ones, can promptly fuck off and shove their stupid posturing straight up their progressive asses right next to their heads.
Steve Urkle has entered the chat.
"That's beyond racist. It's psychotic."
It is definitely racist, but it is not psychotic. HR1 is just simply the Democrats' weapon to ensure they never lose another election. They can see one party rule now- it is no longer over the horizon- it is in sight.
"Everybody knows there are black nerds, but they are gay and named Lamar."
And wow can they throw a javelin. Imagine trying to make Revenge of the Nerds now with the Lamar character let alone Takashi.
Yep, Uncle Hotep is one black guy Howard wouldn't pay to suck off.
Definitely couldn't be made today.
For as long as I can remember, TV series and films have always cast a black person in the role of the computer techno geek. Hunt for Red October comes readily to mind.
From the opinion in the "Black English" case that started it all -
The experts further testified, however, that efforts to instruct the children in standard English by teachers who failed to appreciate that the children speak a dialect which is acceptable in the home and peer community can result in the children becoming ashamed of their language . . . The child who comes to school using the "black English" system of communication and who is taught that this is wrong loses a sense of values related to mother and close friends and siblings and may rebel at efforts by his teachers to teach reading in a different language. . . .
"Black English" is not a language used by the mainstream of society black or white. It is not an acceptable method of communication in the educational world, in the commercial community, in the community of the arts and science, or among professionals. It is largely a system that is used in casual and informal communication among the poor and lesser educated.
The instruction in standard English of children who use "black English" at home by insensitive teachers who treat the children's language system as inferior can cause a barrier to learning to read and use standard English. . . .
It is clear to the court that although some of the teachers rebel at calling the home language "black English" they are acutely aware of it. . . . the teachers all testified that they treated the plaintiff students just as they treated other students. In so doing, they may have created a barrier to learning reading . . .
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/473/1371/2148458/
And I was there, at ground zero.
I thought we already resolved this when Carlton tried to join a college fraternity and they wouldn't let him in because he wasn't *black* enough. I thought when Uncle Phil gravely intoned "we've got to stop doing this to each other", that settled everything. I guess not?
"Yep, Uncle Hotep is one black guy Howard wouldn't pay to suck off."
I thought Howard's gig was dressing as a Marine and giving handies for crack under the el tracks while he reads from Nitschke's "Beyond Evil and Good" or something.
I have always just assumed Howard and Titus are the same person.
Bob Boyd said...
Who actually ever believed there's a monolithic blackness?
Same people who now believe there's a monolithic whiteness?
3/27/21, 9:46 AM
Bob from the top rope....
I have always just assumed Howard and Titus are the same person.
I think you're on to something there.
I once knew a black guy, 30 years ago now, who was really into Heavy Metal and Rock - had the de-riguer jeans jacket with an Iron Maiden concert t-shirt sewed to the back and everything. He was a unicorn. I also knew a white guy at the same time and place (this was in Japan BTW), who was into black music and fashion; also a unicorn. They were both fine dudes.
There are all types.
In an American imagination that has historically stereotyped Black people as alternately ignorant and emotional or sexualized and cool, the nerd — smart and cerebral, unsexy and decidedly uncool — creates cognitive dissonance.
Bradley's statement is itself a stereotype, though I don't think he was aiming at that. Like all stereotypes it's wrong. Like all stereotypes there is some truth in it. You could find people 80 years ago who only thought of Black people as "ignorant and emotional" or comical or barbarous or threatening, and people since then who only think of African-Americans as "sexualized and cool" or righteous and inspiring.
Still, in writing about stereotypes it's best to avoid painting with a broad brush. In fact, even in writing about the media stereotypes of the day one can't stop at just four words. When even the stereotypes Bradley condemns aren't as one dimensional as he portrays them one has to wonder if the rest of the article is worth reading.
Much of Black television is about middle class families, couples and single people, who aren't so different from people of other races. Gangstas don't enter into it and neither do nerds. If a show wants to attract viewers of other races they may play up the different, dangerous image of African-Americans, and to some extent, viewers of other races may view the shows through that lens even without those efforts.
Of course, the MLK Elementary School case was brought by and pushed by a bunch of activists wanting to promote their agenda. Meanwhile, the fact that the case focused on a particular dialect of English was very troubling to the actual parents, who instead were concerned that their kids were underperforming and they thought the school wasn't doing anything about it.
https://aadl.org/node/222864
Am I imagining it, or is the tide actually turning against CRT?
"Am I imagining it, or is the tide actually turning against CRT?"
What we have here is a failure to communicate. You will get your mind right eventually.
in contrast,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOTgAWxovGA
what is the message you are telling urban youts, that you have to be the worst caricature of your ethnic group,
"Am I imagining it, or is the tide actually turning against CRT?"
The more sane people feel safe speaking out against it, then yes, they will realize those pushing it are, at the core, cowardly moral cretins.
At an expensive Jesuit high school where I used to teach and which now has zero Jesuits except for one malicious incompetent at the top, the sane faculty finally started to mutiny against the woke professional development and the obnoxious professional angry black guy "diversity director" hired to push it. One teacher finally had enough of being called a racist and white supremacist by this wannabe Huey Newton and actually took his wedding ring off and said, "I don't care what happens to me. I want a piece of you. Now." Of course the little two-bit pseudo Chuck D turned tail and left the building.
I think people are really starting to have enough of these incompetent degenerates using the progressive play book as a cloak and excuse to wield bullying asshole power over stronger people than them. I've said for quite some time, some of these 'activist' types are going to find themselves picking up their teeth off the ground if they ever tried the shtick outside the protection of a workplace.
Hollywood has a long history of casting black people as nerds. There are many examples of blacks being cast as scientists, engineers and doctors. I suspect that they did it, specifically, to break the negative stereotype that blacks couldn't be nerds. There was the computer tech in The Brain Center at Whipples episode of the Twilight Zone, Miles Dyson created Skynet in the Terminator movies, Dr. Richard Daystrom was the ultimate computer expert in Star Trek (TOS), Geordie La Forge was the chief engineer of the Enterprise in Star Trek (TNG), O.J. Simpson played an astronaut in Capricorn One, Will Smith played Dr, Neville in I Am Legend, Donald Glover played the young astrophysicist who works out the plan to rescue Matt Damon in The Martian, Barney Collier played the gadget tech on Mission Impossible and the list goes on and on.
"Black nerds unsettle the myth of a monolithic Blackness."
To those who believed in such a thing, perhaps, but the article on black nerds tends to reinforce the idea of monolithic blackness:
"Two decades later, Holmon, now 36 and based in Brooklyn, is happily married and the co-founder, along with William Evans, 41, of the website Black Nerd Problems. Their book of the same title will be published this summer."
The exemplary "black nerd" writes about black black blackity black, just like every other black writer who ever lived, except Sowell. A real nerd would have more interesting subjects.
"Hollywood has a long history of casting black people as nerds."
The computer hacker in Die Hard.
The exemplary "black nerd" writes about black black blackity black,
And that seems to be true of the other supposed nerds in the article.
How quaintly monolithic, but what can one expect from the nyt, where headlines are often contradicted by the article.
not to mention alexander scott of I spy, daystrom was a scary character, joe morton is still playing slightly unhinged scientists as with justice league, of course who can forget avery brooks as cisco, in ds9
Blogger Splanky said...
For as long as I can remember, TV series and films have always cast a black person in the role of the computer techno geek. Hunt for Red October comes readily to mind.
Yes and even "An Officer and a Gentleman" had the role of the drill sergeant, written for a white actor, taken by Lew Gossett Jr as an authoritarian over the white kids. He was great in the role, too.
For as long as I can remember, TV series and films have always cast a black person in the role of the computer techno geek.
Sgt Kinchloe - Hogan’s Heroes
Barney - Mission Impossible TV series
Luther Stickel - Mission Impossible movie
"Yes and even "An Officer and a Gentleman" had the role of the drill sergeant, written for a white actor, taken by Lew Gossett Jr as an authoritarian over the white kids. He was great in the role, too."
For years Gossett's DS was the prototype for me. Not surprising to have a few like him when I got to Army BCT. Masters of cutting sarcasm when encountering shit bags, blue falcons, and lollygaggers. I think the Mexican immigrant DSs were the only tougher ones. You did NOT get out of line one step with those guys.
tim maguire said...
Am I imagining it, or is the tide actually turning against CRT?
Not quite yet. However, it is starting to threaten some of it's enablers who thought it would only be used to rid the world MAGA types. (See Althouse's Michelle Goldberg post.)
Samuel L. Jackson in Jurassic Park.
Lucky for me I can't be a Nerd- I'm not good enough at math.
Narr
And too good looking
denzel probably towers over this era, like poitier did in his, will smith, has become harder to tolerate over time, eddy murphy became respectable after being the rogue, to a degree,
Bumble Bee @9:53:
Yep!
it was one of jackson's less yelling performances, and his ending was unfortunate, I wasn't that keen on homicide, but andre braugher was a strong figure,
the tyler perry take on alex cross, wasn't as welcomed as morgan freeman's, then again he was up against a more ruthless foe in matthew fox,
Those interested in the phenomenon can order Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele via the Althouse Amazon portal.
At Comic-Cons, Black cosplayers are sometimes chastised by officious gatekeepers, told that their chosen characters aren’t supposed to be Black
I'm sure it happens, but in the multiple years that I attended SDCC, what I saw was people uniting over a shared fandom. No one cared if your skin color matched the character you were cosplaying as. (Or if you were too tall/short/fat/thin/or a different gender.)
The n-word.
"What would happen if we all announced publicly that we were going to start doing our own human thing without regard to the group?"
They'd be joining America for real. They might even believe they have inalienable rights. The whole woke edifice would collapse. Can't have that.
"Narr
And too good looking"
Hey!
"Blacks being obsessed with being black is the one stereotype that is always true. The rest of us don't really care."
Thank you. That articulates it exactly. Whenever I see something like this article, my reaction is, "Get over yourselves."
The black nerds I have known in my life were never in danger from whites and their stereotyping. The contempt they experienced was from a different direction.
I'd love to see an article about the black slaveowners in Africa and how that challenges stereotypes.
Blacks being obsessed with being black is the one stereotype that is always true
No, before diversity, blacks were colored people, not people of color. Caucasians were white people, not people of white. And, fetuses were babies, not a technical term of art to socially distance technicians and abortionists.
the black slaveowners in Africa
Yes. Also, the black slave owners in America. Some of whom were uncovered in just the last decades. It's a cultural thing that was imported during the height of immigration reform.
Also, the g-word. There is no shortage of g-words in the population.
As a guitar player, my favorite "blerd" is definitely Tosin Abasi.
“ ‘Black English’ is not a language used by the mainstream of society... “
“Excuse me - I speak jive... “
There have been plenty of Black nerds in movies, but they never seemed to get the girl.
That in itself is something to complain about.
At Comic-Cons, Black cosplayers are sometimes chastised by officious gatekeepers, told that their chosen characters aren’t supposed to be Black
"Sometimes"? Often? Rarely? Never? There was that fake controversy a few years back about people complaining about a "Black Stormtrooper" in a "Star Wars" movie. Like being a "Stormtrooper" was a good thing that Whites wanted to keep all to themselves? It was probably just a publicity stunt for the movie or for the people who complained about it.
Blogger Jack Klompus said...
You'd be hard-pressed to find a more racially segregated city than Philadelphia around that time. In my lily-white working class mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood black people were almost exclusively referred to by a word that begins with "n."
The worst racism in Philly was found in Olney and Fair hill, neighborhoods which were Puerto Rican and Hispanic. They fuckin' hated the Blacks.
of course he was perhaps the worst written of the characters, then again perhaps only isaacs, has anything of a character arc in the series, terence howard's seems to have stalled after iron man dropped him.
A little off the subject, but this discussion reminds me of why I love Key and Peele sketches. They mock white liberal pretensions just as much as they do black stereotypes.
Two favorites of mine:
Magical Negro Fight - https://youtu.be/jInlO6-JTww
When the A Capella Group Already has One Black Guy - https://youtu.be/zda8H32pyeI
"Not only do Black nerds confound racist stereotypes..."
Who is being racist? Blacks who tell other blacks to stop 'acting white'?
who is validating what stereotype,
https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/03/jacob-blake-sues-kenosha-officer-rusten-shesky-even-after-prosecutors-found-justifiable-use-of-force/
and encouraging youts to behave in antisocial ways,
loudogblog: Hollywood has a long history of casting black people as nerds.
Good point! Reminds me that because of television I thought all judges were black!
Wakanda is the most technologically advanced nation that has ever existed.
At Comic-Cons, Black cosplayers are sometimes chastised by officious gatekeepers, told that their chosen characters aren’t supposed to be Black
Nerds (White, Black, Asian, Klingon, etc.) don't like Cosplayers (White, Black, Asian, Klingon, etc.) on general principles because a lot of Cosplayers are hot girls who want to dress up as Power Girl, Poison Ivy or Batgirl and show up just to get noticed without really knowing much about the character they're portraying.
except they didn't trade in vibranium, it's kind of a jungle version of asgard, except the latter is a conquering power, or the mystical city of ophir in burroughs and phillip jose farmers tarzan,
Bob Boyd said...
"Who actually ever believed there's a monolithic blackness?"
Let's ask Howard. he never mixes whites with colored.
"His winner for the smartest bird of all is the American Crow (also called the Common Crow), and many other researchers agree."
I was waiting for a train and there was a trash can at the side of the road. A crow was dancing around the rim facing outward. I thought it was odd behavior until another crow came up from the bottom of the trash can and the first crow went in. That is some pretty smart behavior on so many levels.
Much smarter than some of the lefties here.
The Soft Bigotry of Urkelization.
Cop: Come on, we're headin' downtown.
Sugar Bear: Where your warrant at?
Cop: Behind that preposition.
Sugar Bear: What?
Cop: Didn't you go to school? You can't end a sentence with a preposition.
Sugar Bear: Oh. Then, uh, where your warrant at, motherfucker?
The racism you were born with and which has made white people like you successful based on the enslavement of POC throughout history is what led you to refer to "blerd" as slang rather than a portmanteau.
Crack's not here so I'm just trying to fill in.
In every Vietnam war movie there is the light brown bald tall skinny soldier with big black plastic glasses who had perfect elocution, there were black nerds in the 60’s.
"Who actually ever believed there's a monolithic blackness?"
They are monolithic in their obsession with being black.
"An experiment years ago showed that crows can count to four. It involved hunters hiding in a barn. Classic experiment."
I read an article circa 1989 involving hunters in a cornfield blind. They article said the number was (can't remember exactly) 12 or 13 for crows.
Who works harder at enforcing that stereotype, Blacks or Whites?
See Oreo, Uncle Tom etc.
Rinse, repeat.
(Thomas Sowell "doesn't know how to talk to B/black people")
I like the computer nerd on the tv show 'Leverage' who is black and acts in a variety of sterotypical personas. Hardiman is the character name?
Crows have 4 toes so four is likely correct for counting objects.
Or they use a base 4 number system.
Door guard at CosPlay convention: "That's not really an appropriate costume. Green Lantern was not Black.
Black dude in Green Lanten rig: "Well, you are dressed like Batman, and Batman was not an asshole."
Nerds (White, Black, Asian, Klingon, etc.) don't like Cosplayers (White, Black, Asian, Klingon, etc.) on general principles because a lot of Cosplayers are hot girls who want to dress up as Power Girl, Poison Ivy or Batgirl and show up just to get noticed without really knowing much about the character they're portraying.
Maybe it depends on your definition of "nerd". The cosplayers I met usually considered themselves to be nerds. Many of them were dressed up as characters from Homestuck or something like that. They did it because they loved the source material. Of course there were women, and men, who would dress up in attention-getting outfits. Perhaps they did it for the Instagram likes or maybe they really like the character, I don't know. I'm not going to assume they no nothing about the character just because they're hotter than I ever was.
The ones like that who really went all-in on their costumes were not usually the ones sitting in hours long lines, so they weren't the ones I was talking to. I didn't hear anyone say negative things about them, but most conversations tended to be about either our costumes, the panel we were waiting to see, or who we had seen already at the Con.
I guess the nerds you know are just the gatekeeper type, even if it isn't about skin color. Fortunately for me, my experience has been different. Not a single person ever quizzed me on my knowledge of my characters.
An experiment years ago showed that crows can count to four.
A raven scored 1150 on the SAT.
Black nerd = "blerd".
Q: What do you call an Asian nerd?
A: Asian.
" Like being a "Stormtrooper" was a good thing that Whites wanted to keep all to themselves? It was probably just a publicity stunt for the movie or for the people who complained about it."
The original Stormtroopers were all clones of one man, Jango Fett. However, by the time you get to the First Order nonsense, they had to resort to recruiting regular people for the job. Hence, a black Stormtrooper.
I'm a wherd.
Are black nerds trans?
“Stay black” was something I used to hear people like Spike Lee say in the 90s.
One For The Ages:
The difference between a New York Times reader and a Russian reading Pravda is that the Russian knows he is being lied to.
Mary Beth said...
Maybe it depends on your definition of "nerd". The cosplayers I met usually considered themselves to be nerds. Many of them were dressed up as characters from Homestuck or something like that. They did it because they loved the source material. Of course there were women, and men, who would dress up in attention-getting outfits. Perhaps they did it for the Instagram likes or maybe they really like the character, I don't know. I'm not going to assume they no nothing about the character just because they're hotter than I ever was.
The ones like that who really went all-in on their costumes were not usually the ones sitting in hours long lines, so they weren't the ones I was talking to. I didn't hear anyone say negative things about them, but most conversations tended to be about either our costumes, the panel we were waiting to see, or who we had seen already at the Con.
I guess the nerds you know are just the gatekeeper type, even if it isn't about skin color. Fortunately for me, my experience has been different. Not a single person ever quizzed me on my knowledge of my characters.
That was a prevailing attitude about ten years ago. I haven't been to a con in a long time, so cosplay may have gone back to it's origins. I'd heard Steampunks say the same thing; too many people who thought top hat + goggles = Steampunk.
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...
Door guard at CosPlay convention: "That's not really an appropriate costume. Green Lantern was not Black.
Black dude in Green Lanten rig: "Well, you are dressed like Batman, and Batman was not an asshole."
Let's make that more realistic:
Door guard at CosPlay convention: "That's not really an appropriate costume. Green Lantern was not Black.
Black nerd in Green Lantern rig: "Excuse me, but have you never heard of John Stewart, Alternate Green Lantern of Earth I?"
"Black nerds unsettle the myth of a monolithic Blackness"
Bob Boyd said, "Monolithic blackness is not a 'myth', it's a political narrative."
Maybe we (conservative and center right) need to start calling these "narratives" myths instead.
Does mentioning the existence of Black Slaveowners somehow legitimize the practice?
Asking for a friend.
Does mentioning the existence of Black Slaveowners somehow legitimize the practice?
No more than white slave owners implicate people of white. That said, be wary of anyone who exercises liberal license to indulge diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgments).
Wow, it's amazing how people can liberally and with gay appeal wield the n-word without em-pathetic consideration for people of n-word, and people of g-word excluded from the i-word spectrum based on impurities in, not a state, but a process of transition. #HateLovesAbortion
Does mentioning the existence of Black Slaveowners somehow legitimize the practice?
It confirms what most people already know, that the diversity spectrum includes color supremacists.
Did anyone really think of Blacks as monolithic? I mean other than Biden who not only thought but actually blurted out that Blacks who voted against him weren't really Black.
For my part, I know lots of Blacks are racist against Koreans (and other Asians), but I've never thought they were more than a minority among Blacks.
Barack the Magic Negro lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times, they called him that
'Cause he's not authentic like me.
Yeah, the guy from the L.A. paper
Said he makes guilty whites feel good
They'll vote for him, and not for me
'Cause he's not from the hood.
See, real black men, like Snoop Dog,
Or me, or Farrakhan
Have talked the talk, and walked the walk.
Not come in late and won!
[refrain]
Oh, Barack the Magic Negro, lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times, they called him that
'Cause he's black, but not authentically.
Oh, Barack the Magic Negro, lives in D.C.
The L.A. Times, they called him that
'Cause he's black, but not authentically.
Some say Barack's "articulate"
And bright and new and "clean."
The media sure loves this guy,
A white interloper's dream!
But, when you vote for president,
Watch out, and don't be fooled!
Don't vote the Magic Negro in -
'Cause — 'cause I won't have nothing after all these years of sacrifice
And I won't get justice. This is about justice.
This isn't about me, it's about justice.
It's about buffet. I don't have no buffet and there
won't be any church contributions,
WK said : "Crows have 4 toes so four is likely correct for counting objects. Or they use a base 4 number system."
Four objects are four objects regardless of the base of the number system. Four things in base 10 are the same as four things in base X; they are simply expressed differently when written.
From Jim Crow to Black Nerds, Althouse covers the gamut.
Is there just one kind of "white?"
See "white hispanic"
My dad, who grew up on a farm that used mules to plow, claimed that crows would shout out “yee!” and “haw!” from the trees, the commands used to steer the mules. He could have been making that up, but why would he? He also said that they had his respect as a hunter, because they were not easy to kill, not that he put a lot of effort into it, as he hunted for the stew pot almost entirely. Maybe he was just passing on hunting folklore from his youth. For all I know, he heard the story from his grandpa, who probably hunted with a flintlock as a kid.
Speaking of black nerds, two black teen girls just an Uber Eats driver while bing videoed.
I guess that is not nerd behavior but the feral black teens are no longer just boys.
Slavery once had a kind of legitimacy, if you count legitimacy as being commonly accepted by the people alive at the time.
Legitimate: Conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards.
Nobody today in the United States thinks that slavery is legitimate. That’s why “Black Lives Matter” is so grating, it’s the implicit assumption that there is anything other than a vanishingly small number of people who don’t believe it already. That anybody who disagrees with Democrat ‘solutions’ thinks of blacks as somehow less than human. To point out that blacks often owned slaves, and that there are still slave markets in Africa, especially in Libya, (Thank you Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama!) is to make that point, not to suggest that slavery should be tolerated today. American Indians owned slaves prior to contact (look up the origin of the name for the Great Slave Lake) and owned African slaves later on. The point being made is that slave owning is not a uniquely white practice (China just calls them political prisoners) and therefore not a manifestation of “whiteness.” It wasn’t whites who used slaves to build the pyramids, for instance.
Michael K said...
Speaking of black nerds, two black teen girls just an Uber Eats driver while bing videoed.
I guess that is not nerd behavior but the feral black teens are no longer just boys.
3/27/21, 6:16 PM
Equality - good for them! Sounds like they are "claiming space they were long denied."
Seriously, though, two of the best Transformer toy reviewers on Youtube are black. Though I am only a Caucasian nerd, we can smell our own.
My sister, after raising her kids, went to college and became a teacher. She lost me when she supported the teaching of Ebonics. Liberals.
THEOLDMAN
Marcus Bressler said...
My sister, after raising her kids, went to college and became a teacher. She lost me when she supported the teaching of Ebonics. Liberals.
***************
Imagine Martin Luther King giving his famous speech in Ebonics:
"DAMN! I be DREAMIN'!"
Hercules Roundup:
BUMBLEBEE - "The stereotyping of blacks is often by those who never grew up among them."
Amen.
Mark - White Saviors came around to entice them..." Amen
Temujin- Stop pretending masses of people all think and act alike. Amen
Jack Klompus- I think the Mexican immigrant DSs were the only tougher ones.
My lived experience - 1971- Puerto Rican DS. Skinny guy, all muscle. PT baby. Pain/Torture. Men being prepared to go into the meat grinder. No time for cryin'.
He had been in the meat grinder. Made it back alive. Commanded the assembled to keep up with him. He performed every order he gave out. Keep up. Push. Keep up. Go beyond the pain. Keep up.
As a society we now recruit women into the Regular Military. We hand them 'red cards' that they can hold up, if the pain is too much, or if they think DS is being mean.
Keep up. Push. Keep up. Go beyond the pain. Keep up.
Understand this. There is never too much pain for soldiers in training. It cannot match the horror that awaits. When you come back...suck it up, soldier. Get on with life. Don't let the D's make you into a 'victim identity' group. PTSD.
Jesus F'n Christ, you just experienced the Alpha and Omega of human life. You are not a victim. You've been blessed with knowledge few can know.
I think every soldier that comes back from war, should be given the 'Bhagavad Gita' for perspective. Ram schooled Arjuna.
Splanky said...
For as long as I can remember, TV series and films have always cast a black person in the role of the computer techno geek. Hunt for Red October comes readily to mind.
***********
Samuel L. Jackson in "Jurassic Park".
Crows = Blirds.
Legitimate: Conforming to recognized principles or accepted rules and standards.
That's not the meaning of "legitimate."
Legitimate means lawful, derived from legis- meaning law. And not simply law in the sense of statutes passed by assemblies, but Law in the higher sense of conforming to right reason and justice.
The reduction of a human being to property (chattel slavery) or other forms of presumed ownership of one person or their labor by another never conformed to Law in the genuine sense. It was never legitimate.
When my friends and I would go to the annual gaming convention--fantasy, role-playing, board, and wargames of all kinds--one of the pleasures was the costumed nerdy-girl hotties.
Chain mail bikinis--whoda thunk?
Not all were so comely of course.
Narr
That's life among the nerds
In the absence of a cafe, Rush is now the subject of the 1994 Columbo episode starting now. With William Shatner playing the Rush character.
He's up against Duke Mantee on the Movie channel.
He gave one of the great lines: "I spent most of my time since I grew up in jail. And it looks like I'll spend the rest of my life dead."
"That's not the meaning of ‘legitimate.'"
Really? I took that definition from a dictionary. It is not legitimate today in the United States or in the West generally, but it was at one time, and to pretend otherwise is to project today’s laws and morals into the past.
"never conformed to Law in the genuine sense. It was never legitimate.”
SCOTUS once found that slavery was legal in the United States, which means it was, just like the umpire says it’s a strike, it’s a strike, so by “genuine sense” I guess you must mean by today’s standards, which means that you and I are in agreement. I am in no way defending slavery, which was and is abhorrent. Click on the link I provided above to the slave markets in Libya which Hillary and Obama enables by their overthrowing of Khaddafy. The picture of those boys being led into a slave auction will haunt your dreams if you have any heart at all.
Went to an all-boys HS in LA with lots of blacks - good students and fuck-ups as it is everywhere. Black guy who got the top score on the SAT - by 200 pts - also sold me my first matchbox of weed.
"I read an article circa 1989 involving hunters in a cornfield blind. They article said the number was (can't remember exactly) 12 or 13 for crows."
Wow, smarter than President Joe Shitforbrains by at least a factor of two.
PM said--
"Went to an all-boys HS in LA with lots of blacks - good students and fuck-ups as it is everywhere. Black guy who got the top score on the SAT - by 200 pts - also sold me my first matchbox of weed."
Good buzz? I knew some very smart guys of many ethnicities who supplied friends.
Narr
Did K&P Power Falcons get a mention?
I suspect he was mentioned in the NYT article, but as I don't deal with NYT articles, I'll mention him anyway. Thomas Chatterton Williams wrote a book on being a black nerd. Losing My Cool: How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-Hop Culture.
From the Goodreads review:
Growing up, Thomas Chatterton Williams knew he loved three things in life: his parents, literature, and the intoxicating hip-hop culture that surrounded him. For years, he managed to juggle two disparate lifestyles, "keeping it real" in his friends' eyes and studying for the SATs under his father's strict tutelage-until it all threatened to spin out of control. Written with remarkable candor and emotional depth, Losing My Cool portrays the allure and danger of hip-hop culture with the authority of a true fan who's lived through it all, while demonstrating the saving grace of literature and the power of the bond between father and son.
"Black nerds"? They better be careful or they'll be classified as "Asians" and then they'll never get into Harvard.
I took that definition from a dictionary.
A dictionary is only as good as the people who produced it. And in today's world, the so-called authorities are as sloppy with definitions as they play fast and loose with the words themselves.
The "black Nerd"thread ignores a real black nerd. "The Foxes of Harrow" was a novel, made into a movie, whose author was a a real black man.
It was popular in 1947 and I was cautioned by the librarian who insisted on calling my mother before I was allowed to check it out of the local library.
In 1946, he published The Foxes of Harrow, a Southern historical romance, which became the first novel by an African American to sell more than a million copies. In this work he faithfully reproduced many of the genre's most familiar features, with the notable exception of his representation of African-American characters, who bore little resemblance to the "happy darkies" that appeared in such well-known works as Gone With the Wind (1936). That same year he also became the first African American to have a book purchased for screen adaptation by a Hollywood studio, when 20th Century Fox optioned Foxes. Ultimately, the book became a 1947 Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O'Hara.
Oh well, the narrative is more important.
A really good, recent PBS biography on a well-known scientist, who was born into slavery and orphaned at a very early age in tragic circumstances ...
George Washington Carver: An Uncommon Life
Only diversity dogmatists, including NYT, are surprised. Lose your Pro-Choice religion. End the racism, the bigotry.
n.n - 'Lose your Pro-Choice religion'
We are way past infant sacrifice now. We've moved on to mutilating children to appease the transgender gods. Progress - ivism.
We are way past infant sacrifice now. We've moved on to mutilating children to appease the transgender gods. Progress - ivism.
Ah, trans/neos. Individuals unable to reconcile their sex and gender: mental (e.g. sexual orientation) and physical attributes. In children before they credibly have a choice or awareness of social progress, victims, and collateral damage.
Absolutely: selective-child, clinical cannibalism, and gender conversion therapy. That said, the Pro-Choice religion is not limited to these practices. It is a religion notable for being selective, opportunistic, and politically congruent. The Planned Parent/hood rites are noteworthy as a wicked solution, to what the believers characterize as a hard problem. Clinical cannibalism, of course. Medical, surgical, and psychiatric corruption, too. Deja vu. Experiments at Johns Hopkins demonstrated that gender conversion therapy does not produce statistically significant benefits (e.g. calm the cognitive dissonance), and actually forced a dysfunctional progression.
Progress (i.e. unqualified monotonic process): one step forward, two steps backward.
Diversity dogma?
People of color. People of black. People of white. People of orange. People of male. People of female. People of baby... fetus.
Not Americans. Principally a Democrat legacy.
So many dictionaries have fallen under the spell of political correctness that I want to obtain one from 1960 and use that for reference.
THEOLDMAN
If you recall the original Nerds movie, the Black nerd was not only a nerd, he was homosexual. Flamboyantly so. Nerds are, by definition, transgressive rebels against most societal norms. And that is what makes them, or should I say, us, dangerous to cross.
"The idea of monolithic Blackness is a yet again a racist aspect OF THE LEFT."
Yup! There has never been anyone racist on THE RIGHT (to assume your typographical affectation), none who viewed all black people as one undifferentiated mass possessed of the same behavioral traits.
Double n-word.
There has never been anyone racist on THE RIGHT
Libertarians? Not on principle. Exercising liberal license to indulge diversity [dogma] is the religious province of the left. The left-right nexus is leftist.
hmmm, so I'm missing something, apparently.
Finian's Rainbow (1968 film) - Character of Howard, a young African-American botanist trying to breed superior tobacco: actor was Al. Freeman Jr., a sub-plot was that he actually had to put on black mannerisms to hold down his day job as a house servant to the governor.
Mission Impossible (1966 TV series) - Character (repeating) of Barney Collier, played by Greg Morris
Star Trek original series: (1967) - Character Richard Daystrom, actor was William Marshall, inventor of the M5 multitronics unit, considered on intellectual par with Einstein, developer of Star Fleet computers, including the renegade M5 (Note the parallel with Terminator 2)
Die Hard (1998), Character Theo, safe-cracker, actor was Clarence Gilyard. See also Die Hard 3 (I think) where Samuel Jackson plays Zeus Carver, a white-acting technical geek/repairman
Finding Forrester (2000), Character was Jamal Wallace (would-be author), actor was Rob Brown, discouraged by peers for being insufficiently black
Terminator 2 (1991) - Character Miles Dyson, played by Joe Morton, developer of the skynet microprocessor that led to Skynet, terminators, etc.
The Martian (2015) - Character is physicist Rich Purnell, actor Donald Glover, developer of the Purnell maneuver that saves our protagonist from dying alone on Mars;
And those are off the top of my head ranging back to my youth. The black misfit nerd is not a new thing, or a new dramatic character. I'm sure there are many others I have forgotten. Note that none of these were played for laughs.
Wait a minute. Someone at the Times is arguing for the individual at the expense of group identity? I'm confused...
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