The Atlantic - Latest Comments in McWhorter on black nerds

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Fighting Words — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 00:52:51 -0000

Ragamuffin,

Then, would you prefer a debate about which is better, "Starblazers" or "Robotech?"

Of course, as we all know, a real geek would ask, "which Starblazers, series 1 'The Quest for Iscandar,' or series 2 'The Comet Empire?" Our geek would then ask, "which Robotech series: Macross, Robotech Masters, or the Invid series?"

The answers are (as everyone knows): The Quest for Iscandar and Macross.

And yes, of course the Thundercats would win. Comparing the Thundercats and Silverhawks is like comparing Public Enemy to New Edition - they are just not in the same league. Although, Silverhawks had a better theme song (there, I said it).

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Thomas R — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:57:16 -0000

I have a couch, but that's only recently. I read as a kid something that said furniture is a luxury in that you don't need it to live and I think that's true. I don't see anything wrong with sitting on a mattress or special pillow or something. It's kind of "conditioning" that it's wrong, but middle-class people in many cultures don't really have couches and do fine. (I don't know if that was your situation, but still)

On academics and nerds I'd agree it's not unusual for "nerds" to poorly academically, but I'd have to say the majority did well in areas they care about. In cases where that's not true they're quite active in non-sports extracurriculars. (Debate, Forensics, Chess, math competitions, Yearbook, Quiz Bowl, AV Club, etc) I come from a very white world though so definitions might be different. I'm skeptical/uncomfortable with the ida that "blacks" are more "sports oriented." At least in Middle-America white students are obsessed with sports and also alcohol. As I had no interest in either I was basically gay as far as they were concerned.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Hill Rat — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:27:37 -0000

Interesting post. As another brother who had a C-64, played D&D, and can't dance, I feel you.

It's kind of weird because brothers would try to break me down as a nerd, but I never thought of myself like that because I was a decent athlete but for whatever reason that was never enough to bridge the gap. It's like whatever the situation was, we all knew that I was moving on to something else and they were staying right where they were.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Ragamuffin — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 22:39:35 -0000

Now, if TNC was a REAL geek, we would have a frank discussion of who would win in a fight between the Thundercats and the Silverhawks.

I will hack into these computers just to perma-ban you if you say Silverhawks, THIS I SWEAR.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Michael Jackson — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 21:58:22 -0000

"I was an awful dancer, but at a black party there is one person who will be ridiculed more than the guy who can't dance--the guy who doesn't dance at all. That last point is key. The thing I came to love about my community was that they didn't expect you to be a master, but they expected you to try, to fight--sometimes literally."

Sorry TNC, I was the non-dancer and the non-fight-helper. Where does that leave me?

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

OGWiseman — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 20:45:29 -0000

I haven't the first clue about growing up as a black nerd, but I do know quite a lot about growing up as a white nerd, and let me tell you, you get plenty of shit from the cool kids who already know at the back of their mind that you're smarter than they are. I never got called "white" (I am white), but I got called a whole lot of other things. At one point, I considered going down the path of hiding my passion for things and ideas in order to seem cool. Then I realized, fuck these people, in a few years I'm gonna be beyond them. And I sucked it up in my nerd-dom and now I own all those fuckers. So I don't know, it's certainly possible that it's much harder for a black nerd than a white nerd, but I spent a miserable 6 years with no friends to speak of and not getting laid. So I guess I just need it explained one more time, what is different about the experience of a black nerd than a white nerd like me?

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Ed Marshall — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:27:27 -0000

Did you ever really fight with ten people over one guy?

I was in that situation once, I had three people and one of them got into it with a group of about twenty skinheads. My friend turned to me and said "Let's go!" and he ran over there and jumped on top of them like Wolverine, and for five or seven seconds I felt really bad about not following him in. Then he sort of got devoured under all twenty of them and by the time they got done stomping on them they both had heads double normal size and Doc Martin waffle shaped bruises all over them.

Ten out of ten for style, but I'm still glad I didn't bother with that.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

John Henry — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:06:58 -0000

McWhorter....I always get the sense that he doesn't actually know any black people -- at least not any who aren't also employed by conservative thinktanks.

You too! What pisses me off is that he gets paid to spout all this bullshit on all these different platforms as an "authority" on black people when he prolly hasn't been to an MLK blvd in 20 years. Sorry for being "lazy" but he's the black Bill Kristol. Both of them are pulling theories out of of a hat.

The only racial difference in "nerdiness" I've encountered are black nerds tend to have more of a religious or political bent, i.e. practicing Christian or Muslim, or ex-Panther. Their religion requires them to study regularly and in their environment those are the dominant institutions.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

dragnet — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:46:03 -0000

thanks for reppin the westside of chicago, TNC.

i hear a lot talk about the southside, but the west side gets comparatively little love.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

quietude — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 17:09:47 -0000

As a card-carrying black nerd, I am mostly mystified by McWhorter.

I always get the sense that he doesn't actually know any black people -- at least not any who aren't also employed by conservative thinktanks.

We're always objects to him to be used for rhetorical points. That's why so little of anything he says makes any sense and can be so easily dismissed. A little time outside an office would do him a world of good.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Doctor Jay — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:41:29 -0000

First, I don't actually think "nerd" means the same thing as "geek", and I actually think we're talking more geek, while John McW is talking nerd. But never mind...

"T-NC, you may not have been a black nerd, but you certainly could have qualified as an honorary white nerd."

There's no honorary about it. He's a nerd, plain and simple, and welcome to all the secret pony rides in the back lot he can stand.

I'm an engineer. I've spent my professional career among nerds. They are predominantly white, it's true, but that's not what marks you as a nerd. And reading TNC, it's entirely clear that he is "one of us" in the same way that Brad DeLong, or John Rogers of KungFuMonkey is.

To cap it off, I no longer have a couch in my house either. Just lots of chairs, including Mom and Dad recliners. Damn. Soul mates.

This despite his affinity for writing posts that I have no idea what he's talking about. Who knows? He could be speaking Klingon. Now where's the Blackipedia?

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

wj — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:24:17 -0000

You nailed the critical point when you noted that "...different cultures have their rules and mores." And they also have slots (whatever they are called) for those who just don't quite fit in.

You note that, in the culture you grew up in, everybody was expected to try to dance, and to help out a neighbor in a fight. In the one I grew up in, everybody was expected to do well academically. As in, it was a non-selective high school (taking in anybody who lived in 3 neighboring small towns, and all the farms around them) where upwards of 98% of the graduating class was in college the next year. Including the kids who had been in the "non-academic" track -- yes, we had those back then. In short, virtually everybody would have qualified for "nerd" if the term had existed. But we still had cliques based on a variety of features.

Teenagers form groups. That's just how they behave. And those who don't quite fit, end up as a non-group group. If, by pure chance, that out group resembles a group elsewhere, you can get a term like "black nerd" -- but the point is not that you resemble that other group. It's just that you don't quite fit in; you're "weird". Which, I suspect, describes a huge fraction of your readers. Or Megan's, or Andrew's, or those of most other blogs.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Fighting Words — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 16:09:46 -0000

I don't know. For me, I just needed to go to school. I needed the structure. I just can't compute how a nerd could not do well in school.

But I do want to add that for nerds/geeks/dorks, there is a parallel universe from "normal" society. This is where the "nerdier" you are, the more highly regarded you are by your "nerdy" peers. I mean, in nerd culture, athletics are looked down upon, whereas knowing every Dr. Who or Red Dwarf episode is. Also, when I went to college, I tried to join the anime club. But I was looked down on by other anime club members because I was just a History and Political Science major and not one of the really nerdy majors like EECS (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) or Molecular and Cellular Biology. I just could not win either way.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

TKOEd — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:59:51 -0000

I co-sign Fighting Words' definitions of nerds, geeks & dorks.

Being a nerd has pretty much nothing to do with school performance. I was having beers with a dude on friday that graduated from Cornell & goes to a top 20 law school & he was ragging on the nerds in his classes.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

BrianSierk — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:59:02 -0000

I agree with TNC, sports obsession is not more pronounced racially. It's pretty prevalent all through western culture. Almost every culture, in fact. I can't think of one modern culture that goes not have a sport fetish.

As another scholastically under performing nerd

(Got my BS in just under a decade)the issue is not nerdiness=good grades its good grades=linear thinking and externally motivated. Many nerds are motivated either internally or subculturally, and so dominant culture success can actually mean a loss of status in their chosen subculture, or can be seen internally as a capitulation to a crappy system.

Even now, my PhD brother, with less job security and similar wage, but more debt, calls me to ask how to do certain things, like negotiate mortgages and contracts, because he has learned from experience that if he goes in thinking lineraly, ad looking for external approval, the elliptical thinking and manipulative negotiator will skin him alive. Mike knows that he is suited for academia, but most environments are not like academia.

My kids just got a Thundercats DVD that had a Wheeled Warriors preview. My 7 year old son was interested.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

hubcap — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:49:42 -0000

"I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart."
- Milhouse Van Houten

OK, smartness and school success are not the same thing. But any excuse to use that line.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Ta-Nehisi Coates — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:22:27 -0000

"For males, black culture is more jock oriented than white culture."

This just strikes me as a generalization, that is basically unprovable. Leaving aside the fact that we're comparing a community of what, thirty, forty million people to one of about two hundred million, I think American culture as a whole is pretty sports-obsessed. There is a reason the Super Bowl is the biggest ad boondoggle of the year--and it isn't black kids. I've really noticed no difference between blacks and whites, in terms of sports obsession, or jock worship. The difference is in variety of interest, and home-life--but that has very little to do with being black, and everything to do with wealth.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Fighting Words — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:20:19 -0000

Ragamuffin,

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors was a cartoon in the late 1980's. It was based on a line of toys called "Wheeled Warriors." They were kind of like car versions of Mr. Potato Head. Where you can remove and replace various parts of the cars and add weapons and such. And to continue with our theme of blacks in fantasy. The good guys had white cars with a white driver, and the bad guys were in black vehicles with a green brainlike creature. Additionally, the good guy vehicles had weapons like guns or arms, while the bad guy weapons were like buzzsaws or things like that.

In the TV series, this was definately riding the coattails of the "Mad Max" movie series. You had Jayce, who was the leader with some special ring (I think he was a prince, or something). They were the good guys and fighting the evil green brain/plant creatures.

Now, if TNC was a REAL geek, we would have a frank discussion of who would win in a fight between the Thundercats and the Silverhawks.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Stacy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:18:28 -0000

"However, white nerds feel no need to play Lacrosse even if all of the white jocks are playing."

Let it be known that most white male jocks do NOT play Lacrosse. That has more to do with status and geographic location.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Stacy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:16:38 -0000

"Cross country running is a nerdy sport because you get to practice by yourself and do not depend on teammates."

No, trust me, I'm fully aware that cross-country is a nerdy sport. I'm not doubting that the things you mentioned, are in fact, nerdy. I'm just saying I don't think nerds recognize that they are nerdy, and are therefore attracted to these types of activities. Maybe a chicken or egg type dilemma. But who knows, this is probably a silly thing for me to dispute.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

mjohnso27 — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:10:34 -0000

I think Andrew's right. There doesn't have to be a correlation between being a nerd and being "book smart". See, e.g. Heather Matarazzo's character in "Welcome to the Dollhouse" (Dawn Weiner) for an example of a nerd who does poorly in school.

Also, many gifted, but slightly quirky kids I knew back in the day, did poorly academically and sometimes dropped out of school because they were bored to tears with rote classroom instruction. See, for example, black kids like my nephew who can memorize entire catalogues of hip-hop songs overnight, but who have trouble remembering vocabulary words for an English quiz.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

superdestroyer — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:10:02 -0000

Stacy,

Cross country running is a nerdy sport because you get to practice by yourself and do not depend on teammates. If you look at high schools with good cross country teams, they are the college prep schools. The same can really be said of golf. You need aspergers like concentraiton to be good at golf. Professional golfers can remember every swing of a round and usually keep records and have good attention to detail.

guys who end up as nerds realize that they were never going to be good athletes by fifth or sixth grade.

For males, black culture is more jock oriented than white culture. However, the reserve is true for women. Black males are overrepresented as college athletes and as professional athletes. However, as was mentioned in Hoop Dreams, many black athletes benefited from early maturity.

As you said yourself, you played baskerball because it is what blacks play. However, white nerds feel no need to play Lacrosse even if all of the white jocks are playing.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Fighting Words — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 15:08:28 -0000

Sorn,

You said, "It involves having a passionate interest in a particular subject and pursuing it passionately sometimes to the detriment of everything else." Actually, that is not the definition of a nerd, what you are describing is a geek.

A nerd is a general term for someone who is smart and works really hard at school. The nerd enjoys studying, and can usually be found studying while everyone else is partying. The nerd is very concerned about getting into a good college, and will work hard to get there. A nerd is not necessarily uncool (lots of nerds are also athletes and class officers), but usually is. Also, some nerds can use their nerdiness to their advantage like tutoring the cute girl in Physics class.

A geek is someone who has a passionate knowledge/interest in some particular subject (like you said). Now, this can be anything from Star Trek to Baseball statistics, from anime to heavy metal music, the geek will know everything about a particular subject. I know this guy who has memorized every line from the original Star Wars trilogy - that is a geek. Now, what complicates things is that some subjects that our society has deemed more geekier than others. For example, it is acceptable among the great mass of non-nerds to be geeky about sports, music, James Bond films, or certain other things, but it is absolutely geeky (and looked down upon) to know everything about Star Trek (any variation), computer engineering, Role Playing Games, etc. This was parodied in an Onion article from years ago about a Baseball geek who looked down upon a D&D geek.

A dork is someone who has little or poor social skills. They usually dress poorly, have bad table manners, tells bad jokes at inopportune times, picks his nose, and has trouble speaking to members of the opposite sex. The dork is the guy who can't score in a brothel. A dork is also the guy who writes a long post about nerds, geeks, and dorks.

And, some lucky few, like me, are nerds, geeks, and dorks all rolled into one. I call this "the trifecta."

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Stacy — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:58:55 -0000

"Many nerdy white males picked their pursuits to avoid jocks..."

This makes it seem as though nerds realize they're nerds at a young age, and therefore decide to like computers, or cross country, or even NASCAR. This doesn't seem right to me.

Re: McWhorter on black nerds

Mikel — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:57:06 -0000

Great insight TNC.

I gotta co-sign Andrew. I was the same way.

Considered "gifted", I skipped a grade in elementary school, loved computers, read a lot, liked sports but sucked at them, and was socially awkward as hell. I was definitely considered a nerd though my grades told a different story. I failed 8th grade, but because we were moving away after the school year, they pushed me forward.

Fact is, I hated hated hated school and couldn't be bothered attempting to learn things I had no interest in, but the stuff I wanted to learn I ate that shit up. Plus I got caught up with the bad kids doing bad shit so not only did half the school's population think I was a total nerd, but the other half was scared to death of me by association. Definitely an interesting dichotomy.

I felt high school was pointless and beneath me, was a general pain in the ass to my teachers and in some instances told them to their face that I just wasn't going to do certain assignments because they were silly and useless and that was when I actually showed up. I barely graduated and never set foot in a classroom ever again.

It's good to see that I'm not the only "nerd" to struggle in school. I guess everybody just learns their own way.