KhingKOBRA: 07/01/2007

Get Crunk

The following is an article from the Sunday Magazine section of the New York Times... I was, to put it far more kindly than is deserved, grossly offended by the conclusions drawn here in... My dissection of said article will follow in Red after the article.

Idea Lab

Who’s a Nerd, Anyway?
By BENJAMIN NUGENT

What is a nerd? Mary Bucholtz, a linguist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been working on the question for the last 12 years. She has gone to high schools and colleges, mainly in California, and asked students from different crowds to think about the idea of nerdiness and who among their peers should be considered a nerd; students have also “reported” themselves. Nerdiness, she has concluded, is largely a matter of racially tinged behavior. People who are considered nerds tend to act in ways that are, as she puts it, “hyperwhite.”

While the word “nerd” has been used since the 1950s, its origin remains elusive. Nerds, however, are easy to find everywhere. Being a nerd has become a widely accepted and even proud identity, and nerds have carved out a comfortable niche in popular culture; “nerdcore” rappers, who wear pocket protectors and write paeans to computer routing devices, are in vogue, and TV networks continue to run shows with titles like “Beauty and the Geek.” As a linguist, Bucholtz understands nerdiness first and foremost as a way of using language. In a 2001 paper, “The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness,” and other works, including a book in progress, Bucholtz notes that the “hegemonic” “cool white” kids use a limited amount of African-American vernacular English; they may say “blood” in lieu of “friend,” or drop the “g” in “playing.” But the nerds she has interviewed, mostly white kids, punctiliously adhere to Standard English. They often favor Greco-Latinate words over Germanic ones (“it’s my observation” instead of “I think”), a preference that lends an air of scientific detachment. They’re aware they speak distinctively, and they use language as a badge of membership in their cliques. One nerd girl Bucholtz observed performed a typically nerdy feat when asked to discuss “blood” as a slang term; she replied: “B-L-O-O-D. The word is blood,” evoking the format of a spelling bee. She went on, “That’s the stuff which is inside of your veins,” humorously using a literal definition. Nerds are not simply victims of the prevailing social codes about what’s appropriate and what’s cool; they actively shape their own identities and put those codes in question.

Though Bucholtz uses the term “hyperwhite” to describe nerd language in particular, she claims that the “symbolic resources of an extreme whiteness” can be used elsewhere. After all, “trends in music, dance, fashion, sports and language in a variety of youth subcultures are often traceable to an African-American source,” but “unlike the styles of cool European American students, in nerdiness, African-American culture and language [do] not play even a covert role.” Certainly, “hyperwhite” seems a good word for the sartorial choices of paradigmatic nerds. While a stereotypical black youth, from the zoot-suit era through the bling years, wears flashy clothes, chosen for their aesthetic value, nerdy clothing is purely practical: pocket protectors, belt sheaths for gadgets, short shorts for excessive heat, etc. Indeed, “hyperwhite” works as a description for nearly everything we intuitively associate with nerds, which is why Hollywood has long traded in jokes that try to capitalize on the emotional dissonance of nerds acting black (Eugene Levy saying, “You got me straight trippin’, boo”) and black people being nerds (the characters Urkel and Carlton in the sitcoms “Family Matters” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”).

By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white. Bucholtz sees something to admire here. In declining to appropriate African-American youth culture, thereby “refusing to exercise the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded,” she writes, nerds may even be viewed as “traitors to whiteness.” You might say they know that a culture based on theft is a culture not worth having. On the other hand, the code of conspicuous intellectualism in the nerd cliques Bucholtz observed may shut out “black students who chose not to openly display their abilities.” This is especially disturbing at a time when African-American students can be stigmatized by other African-American students if they’re too obviously diligent about school. Even more problematic, “Nerds’ dismissal of black cultural practices often led them to discount the possibility of friendship with black students,” even if the nerds were involved in political activities like protesting against the dismantling of affirmative action in California schools. If nerdiness, as Bucholtz suggests, can be a rebellion against the cool white kids and their use of black culture, it’s a rebellion with a limited membership.

Benjamin Nugent is the author of “American Nerd: The Story of My People,” which will be published next spring.

My main qualm with the conclusions reached by Mary Bucholtz is her assertion of what constitutes blackness, throughout the article her theory describes poor grammar, an undervaluing of education and a general tendency to devalue being well read as being inherently black. My primary concern is with her assertion that being poor spoken is key characteristic of being black. Now while I will admit that in popular culture poor urban black and latino youths are often depicted as poor spoken illiterates that is, I believe, not a scholarly conclusion nor any evidence of a pattern on which to build an argument. Scholarship must dig deeper than that. While I admit that the statistics do show that poor urban youths are less likely to value a more educated way of speaking it should also be noted that the same is true and has always been true for their poor rural complements. In other words, a lack of appreciation for proper grammar is in actuality a by product not of blackness but of poverty. The notion amongst poor youths that being well spoken is a sign of being upity is neither black nor white. In addition this ignorant devaluation of being well spoken is not something that came into being with the hip hop generation, or for that matter even that first great mixing of the races, RockNRoll. A portion of poor ignorant people have always viewed being well spoken and well read as a sign that one thinks they are better than everyone else. The problem is not that the illiterate speak of black youths is being co-opted by middle class whites who are part of the "cool" caste. In fact if one digs deeper they will realize that in fact the attitudes and dress of poor rural whites are being adopted by this same caste of middle class white kids. This is evident by the wearing of trucker hats, wife-beaters and the adoption of Pabst Blue Ribbon as a drink of choice. These are just three examples of white middle and upper middle class cool kids adopting the rituals and attire of poor rural youths. This illustrates the point that what in fact distinguishes nerds from cool kids is a tendency amongst the cool kids to appropriate the rituals and totems of the "other". Where as nerds have a tendency to exhibit an almost willful ambivalence to the totems and rituals of the other and an almost blind acceptance of their own reality. In other words, wherein the cool kid appropriates and adopts the rituals and totems of others as a mask for a less concrete identity and sense of self; the nerd can best be described as being almost willfully ambivalent to the value attributed to the rituals and totems of the other because they possess a more fully realized sense of self and identity and a greater acceptance of this identity. It is this almost devaluation of the other, be it beaters and PBR or bling and baggy jeans. that distinguishes the nerd. Nerds are uninterested in the totems and rituals of the other because they have a tendency to possess a richer inner life as evidenced by what they do value. Nerds are more likely to value complex problem solving, creative endeavors and the fantastic stories of comic books and science fiction. As a result of this richer inner life they find less value in as well as less need for the rituals and totems of the other. It is this richer sense of self that identifies the nerd as opposed to some notion of whiteness versus blackness.