As brown blog folks, we know a thing or two about nerdiness. I was surprised therefore to see this NYT article about the research of Mary Bucholtz, a linguist at UCSB who has been studying nerds for the past dozen years. According to the article, Bucholtz argues that nerdiness is essentially exaggerated whiteness:
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Nerds – not just white people any more |
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.”As a linguist, Bucholtz understands nerdiness first and foremost as a way of using language… Bucholtz notes that the “hegemonic” “cool white” kids use a limited amount of African-American vernacular English … But the nerds she has interviewed, mostly white kids, punctiliously adhere to Standard English… 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. [Link]
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p>I’m willing to concede part of her point – that “cool” culture in America has to do with black culture, and that nerds define themselves self-consciously against it. That’s why (as she points out) black nerd figures, like Urkel, are so amusing. It’s worth reading her whole argument, but I’m not going to quote it at greater length here because I’m more interested in what she leaves out, namely immigrant nerds or FOB nerds.
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p>Growing up in New York City, we had nerds of all colors, sizes, shapes and flavors, but the median nerd was probably an immigrant kid of some sort. It didn’t matter where your parents came from, just that they weren’t born here and that you yourself may have emigrated as a kid.
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p>Since I went to a geek high school, I grew up with Eastern European nerds, tons and tons of east Asian nerds, and yes, brown nerds. And it wasn’t about people defining themselves against blackness — African nerds with their white short-sleeve shirts, slacks and ramrod straight posture were just as nerdy as an IITian or MITian around. [Which is precisely why “blackness” gets tricky when talking about immigrants – are you going to call African immigrants Oreos just because they don’t fit stereotypes of “black Americans”?]
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p>As a matter of fact, I would go as far as to argue that brown nerds aren’t hyperwhite but ultrabrown. They weren’t trying to emulate the squarer parts of American culture, in fact they were uberdesi 
. They wore polyester short-sleeve shirts, coke bottle glasses, were very earnest and spoke grammatical english. And yes, before somebody brings up the distinction, they were not just geeks but pukka nerds.
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p>However, brown nerds (and immigrant nerds in general) fall outside of the black-white dichotomy that Bucholtz sees at the heart of nerdiness. They’re not trying to “deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white,” they’re simply not white. Sure, that means that they don’t acquire the popular culture markers of being cool, many of which have to do with African-American culture, but that didn’t make them any closer to white culture either.
I know that American culture, and American cultural history has largely been dominated by the binary opposition between “Black” and “White”. But I’m mystified as to how Dr. Bucholtz could spend 12 years of studying nerds in California and still think of nerd culture that way. Squareness is global and was appropriated a long time ago.
UPDATE: Readitfirst has read Bucholtz’s work directly, and explains her research thusly:
You can’t rely on a blippy NYT description to present arguments in their full complexity; as much as you seem to care about the details, you don’t seem to have looked for them! First of all, her work is based on ethnographic research, which is a) a form of social scientific research [contra razib, who seems to have a very narrow idea of ‘science’], b) empirical, and c) local. I don’t think she claims to be uncovering what “nerd” (or for that matter “whiteness”) means globally, or even in all parts of the US or among all age groups. Her work is based on intense participant-observation in one high school (or at least the part that resulted in the 2001 paper mentioned in the NYT) in California; she gives a fairly detailed description of the school in the paper. One aspect of the school is how race figures into social groups, and she explains that in this particular school, the white students typically identify themselves in terms of a black-white binary, where Asians and others are deemed invisible by erasure (this is a common term in linguistic anthropology; it refers to a semiotic process whereby groups or practices are basically “disappeared” from a field of discourse):
In spite of the school’s tremendous racial and ethnic diversity, resulting in the visibility of whiteness as a racial category, white students at Bay City High frequently operated according to an ideological dichotomy between African Americans and European Americans, the two largest racialized groups at the school.
Readitfirst actually says more than that, it’s worth clicking through and reading the comment. As for the charge, mea culpa. I should, at the very least, have been more careful in terms of characterizing Bucholtz’s work based on a single NYT article. At the very least, I should have said I was responding to the argument in the article if I didn’t have the time to read the original research.
but ok, the very fact that so many of the comments above are about defining exactly what constitutes nerdiness makes me wonder how you get away with 12 years of studying so vague. at some point in that thesis you’re going to have be exact about what nerddom is and because there’s no dictionary definition to lead the way, you’re going to be guided by your own biases. … so you’re creating the nerdhood you’re so intent on studying. so, yes, you can say “nerds are fundamentally white,” because that’s your definition of nerdiness. someone else can say “hell naw, nerds are essentially brown” and you really can’t talk it out, because the whole definition of nerddom is individually constructed. sure, there are some generally accepted rules, specifically re: academics. but in some circles nerd = geek. and in others, it doesn’t (as elucidated so carefully upthread). there are, for instance, nerds i know of who study only the Romantics. and nerds who went on to get BComps. and nerds who love Physics. but that’s just me being all wishy-washy left liberal about hardcore definitions.
and also, i’m cool with the study of subcultures (say, graffiti artists or anime lovers or whatever) but do nerds constitute a subculture? are they aware of themselves in that way (or ourselves in that way, as the case may be), as part of a global/national movement?
also, it makes me laugh.
Your teacher may be right. In the immortal words of N.E.R.D, they’re also loved for their BRAINS.
I think she totally misses the real point that nerdiness is not about being any part black, white, brown, etc (and their “ultra” variants) but more, it is the desire among a group of people to seek out knowledge and learning and to bask in the fruits of their learning…..which seems to be “uncool” in many cultures.
look, confucius was a nerd. and, guess what, other partisans within the “100 schools” called him and his followers on their nerdishness (their preoccupation with details, formalism, learning and lack of truck with the flow if it violated their principles). there’s no need to straight-jacket nerdishness into the white-all-the-root-of-all-model. a lot of the ‘critical race folks’ in my conception are very, very religious. hey just happen to think the white race are gods (or demons) who control every aspect of the universe, in fact, they are masters of the universe! bow down before the white gods, for they are the he-mans of this cosmos. those of us who don’t perceive the systematic and severe bite of racism need our false-consciousness raised, let us be exorcised of the white demons who possess us!
do people really have an image of the researchers and professors at top schools as squarish and emasculated? In fact, these days due to intense competition for a handful of positions, the professors at these top schools particularly the young ones, are almost always intensely charismatic.
fwiw, gnapoor only dates women of color.
I think she totally misses the real point that nerdiness is not about being any part black, white, brown, etc (and their “ultra” variants) but more, it is the desire among a group of people to seek out knowledge and learning and to bask in the fruits of their learning…..which seems to be “uncool” in many cultures.
She’s not trying to find the essence of nerdiness (I have done it! I have distilled the essence of nerdiness! and they laughed at me in the academy! muahahahahah!), she’s trying to understand the way in which people use the word to create social distinctions and the way in which different groups interact. One part of that is the language they use. You might be right that it’s about a desire to seek out knowledge, but the social construction of it is more. You could seek out knowledge and speak in slang, nerds do not.
read it first, does Bucholtz’ writing ever mention nerd slang?
AYB and all that?
^__^
Wasn’t there this really long heated discussion that FOBs prefer being addressed as DBDs?
Yes, there was. But you’re assuming I can substitute DBD for FOB here which is wrong. I’m talking about all recent immigrants, all of whom are called FOB. If I say DBD it would exclude people like recent eastern-European immigrants, African ones, Chinese ones, etc.
but is that because he’s really a badass MC who knows what he wants?
or because he can’t get regina george?
i suspect(or hope) the former scenario is true. oooh KEVIN G!
Which is by far the best part of this whole movie.
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
ive always thought nerd contained within it an element of social ineptitude as well, whereas dork was sort of like a nerd, but without the brains.
For a true synergy of whiteness and nerdiness, check here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xEzGIuY7kw
Are you going to call black Americans Oreos because they don’t fit stereotypes of black Americans?
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. NYT article
I read the brief NYT piece- its seems implicit- being diligent about school makes whites popular with whites? That was not my observation,I attended a 78% white high school in the Midwest. The extra smart/nerd/geek/ kids were not given an daily beat down, but they were not the prom king and queen either. Someone posted this document before on a similiar topic. The comment above is almost a cut and paste from it.
I am NOT denying the education achievement gap in b-w students, however I don’t think its out of fear of ‘acting’ white or whatever Thomas Sowell (?)or some other person said 50 yrs ago.
“American”/white culture is/was predominately Anglo-Saxon. Now that English boys are having problems in school (issues of broken families/’modernity’ hyper consumerism’), the terms to describe failure and success have to be re-valuated. In many ways I think the UK is several years behind the US. In this trend I think they have taken the lead; vis a vis the majority population- as impacted by modernity/ hyperconsumerism /single parent families – Gee I wonder if “matrifocallty cultural forms” between the English and the Americans are present in this day and age, does white=blank as in slates?
When ever I read this stuff I always start thinking about “white”ness in general. I am mainly of Slavic origin, and sure, nowadays that means i’m “white” but not so long ago my peeps were marked by those considered “white” and civilized” as another lowly race, as well as italians, irish, jewish, roma and everybody else in the world…
The article linked to another article talking about how Asians are starting to be considered “white” or that they “made it” to be accepted in majority white culture in the US. But looking back, the same thing happened in the past with so many different regional and cultural groups (like Slavs)in the US. We kind of have a weird history of using the binary terms in nonsensical ways.
It’s not like being “white” is all being from the same cultural background or origin to begin with. And what’s with the term Caucasian? That’s the biggest misnomer to begin with. It came from this old school idea that all the “whities” of the world originated from one mountain range then spread out to civilize.. I guess much like the ideas of Ayrans… but annnywhooo,
my point is, the whole idea of black/white as racial categories/binaries is totally absurd to begin with. How can we general white culture in this country when there are people of so many different cultural, regional, and religious backgrounds? Just like the example of black americans of generations versus a recent immigrant from Africa might be totally different, so might a Russian immigrant and a person whose family has lived in the US for hundreds of years. I think the idea of a uniform cultural group corresponding with a “race” in the US is total bunk.
Meanwhile, Danica McKellar (from The Wonder Years) just wrote a book about math “for girls” (i.e. algebra problems featuring lip gloss as variable).
She quotes, in Newsweek:
Good to know.
isn’t that copyright infringement, ennis? i could’ve swear i’ve seen that word ‘ultrabrown’ elsewhere. 🙂
Why do they always pick Urkel as the quintessential black “nerd?” Dwayne Wayne from “A Different World” was a nerd too, but I guess some people think he doesn’t count because he ended up marrying a hot wife.
Huey,
You got it all twisted brotha. Dwayne Wayne was no nerd. Dude was straight up playa playa. Whitney, the one you refer to as the hot wife, was the nerd.
Shoot man.
Nope. I got the reference and I can’t be a nerd, because I totally nailed those two hot Bene Gesserit sisters last night. It was one hell of a “spice blow,” if you know what I mean
And occasionally there is the outlier who defies the trite nerd classification:
It’s interesting that you guys brought up Dwayne and Whitney b/c I always thought they were BOTH unusual (for TV) characters. He was a math nerd who was also a great conversationalist and she was a virgin until marriage. Don’t see types like that on TV much!
are the dwayne wayne sunglasses still around? and wasn’t it Whitley? hmmm
Linzi, Culture and race are two different things. They rarely correspond. Race is real and scientific (biology). Caucasian does not mean white but has come to describe people who are. All whites are Caucasian but not all Caucasians are white.
Who is the most famous nerd that has improved the quality of life for billions ? In my way of thinking nerd is not derogatory but praiseworthy.
God, please tell me you are speaking tongue-in-cheek. Who today would seriously make the statement that “race” is a biological reality? (Of course, it remains a social reality.)
You cannot change a scientific fact because it offends your sensitives or because of ‘political-correctness’.
I’m not sure about that.
link
Later in response to a request for “Caucasian validation”
Not exactly a Yes or No. The answer was “you can draw the line where you want to”. However the term ‘Caucasian’ is used I’m pretty darn sure it does not mean African ancestry, but as you see, you can, change the reply depending on the “sensitives” of the person asking the question. Problem solved.
Then there’s Carlton from Fresh Prince.
It depends on what you mean by absurd, if you mean ‘having little to no scientific origin’ then yes, but if you mean, ‘having an impact on the quality of life’ then you’re sadly mistaken.
You called?
Thanks for the shout out.
My observation about DBD nerds is that they have misplaced assumptions on what is cool and what is not.
A while ago, I remember talking to a friend in India on my way to lunch and he exclaimed “Burgers, Fries and a Soda eh!”. Though not a nerdy statement, it gives you an insight into what they think is cool.
Assumptions like these, coupled with their fear of interacting with the “locals” at most times makes it difficult for them to be grafted into such an article.
And far as the “locals” go, nerdiness / geekiness has a subculture. Comics, TV shows, movies and even video games. This goes beyond the realm of a DBD given the short time frame they have to achieve such a status.
Having said all this, the right company and an open mind can do wonders. “Effing kangaroos“.
how come neo nazis and skinheads aren’t nerds? Something missing in the “whiteness = nerdiness” (admittedly it’s a bit more than that) equation, though there’s something interesting about it. Has something to do with vulnerability.
— The Geek used to not be smart at all, but was a carnival freak. There was an old movie about a carnival and an alcoholic, who has to end up begging to be the geek, someone who lives in a cage, sort of animal-like, eats rats, etc. for the amusement of attendees.
I’d say he was more dork than nerd 😉
If #63 is the short of it, then why aren’t nerd/geek PC terms? This question qualifies me as one of the above, no?
I always thought that Dwayne Wayne was a “nerd” who proudly stated that he got 800 on his math SAT. His character (who didn’t get a date until the fourth or fifth season) evolved and became less nerdy during the series. As for Whitley, she was seriously “bougie”. I can recall that there were a few “nerds” on “A Different World”.
In terms of “nerds”, here in New York, you can see a wide variety of them coming out of Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech and Bronx Science around three o’clock during the week. One of them is my alma mater and honestly, specialized urban schools should be researched because of the high concentration of a variety of diligent students.
Ah, look who we have here. Mr.UberKool Desi who ‘gets it’ when we others don’t. OK, that was a little too harsh, I apologize.
This particular anecdote/example of fastfood being seen as cool is not restricted to us unfortunate ‘uncool’ DBDs (no, no, I would not dare to include you Karthik in this unenlightened group; just me and perhaps a bunch of others back in Deshland or in Siberia or on Mars). When the first McDonald’s was opened in Moscow, Russia in 1992 (or 1991?) it was the hottest place to be seen in town–even if you had to wait in line for 3 hours to enter! People took their dates there; rich, beautiful teen-daughters of Moscow’s oligarchs wanted to work there. Why? The newness; the exotic factor; the ‘west’ factor that it represented. The high cost of the burger and milkshake itself, served to keep out the peasants, kulaks and babushkas, of course, thus creating an ‘exclusive’ in-crowd atmosphere for the young and the rich. Without understanding the larger Russian society, it would be very easy to misunderstand the otherwise French-speaking, piano-playing, fur-wearing, opera-going, long-legged, blonde Russian misses, who went to grab a burger there, of course.
Ditto in Budapest, Hungary. McDonald’s was already there in the summer of 1989 when I visited–in the ‘coolest’ part of downtown Budapest; in what seemed like a Bohemian part of the city to me.
The following touching short-story by one of America’s best young writers Rattawut Lapcharoensap describes this not-so-simple phenomenon of (ubiquitous and disrespected in the West) fastfood as vehicles of ‘high culture’ or ‘cool’ factor. Phenomenon or not, this is one of the best examples of the craft of short-story writing. http://www.all-story.com/issues.cgi?action=show_story&story_id=239
I mean “having little or no scientific origin”. I know my post was a little… meandering.. but I guess my point was that race IS socially constructed, unlike #75’s opinion.
My point was that the idea of race is fluid.. as someone was saying “asians are starting to be considered white” I was pointing out.. thats not the first time this happened, since back in the day Slavs (among many many others) were considered to be a different (and degenerate) race in compared to “white” people. (actually, the word “slave” derived from “Slav” as Slavic people were used as slaves through Europe) Now all of a sudden, I am accepted (?) as “white”.
I like to put “white” in quotes because it is so absurd to begin with. It’s not a scientific fact, its a mixture of adaptions to a certain region of the world.. of course, seeing as how race is all defined by these outward characteristics, such as skin tone, width of nose, eye and hair color, etc which really vary so much from region to region. I am sure we have all heard a million times the small amount of genes that vary by region (er, “race”) as opposed to the vast amount that are more similiar, regardless of outward appearance.
I absolutely agree that race, as socially constructed, has a huge impact on peoples lives, I guess I just get sick of it represented as race being a scientific fact and also that having the same race means the same culture.
Irrespective of how its constructed, if those who are socially classified as “non white” say they have gotten the shaft at the behest of giving things to those people who are socially classifed as “white’ then, it doesnt give a flyin hoot how scientific what the designation is. which you said, so I’m glad we agree.
That’s exactly how it works.
I am surprised you think there’s a positive correlation between being nerdy and being cool. My impression was that nerds were people who gave up on being cool so they could be smart. Even then, many of them like to believe that they are cool as well as smart, and are not generally happy with the nerd tag.
I don’t think being part of the subculture is the defining characteristic for nerdiness. At least 80% of the really smart “local” guys I know (for whom I am very sure the general consensus would be ‘nerdy’) are not very much into the subculture.
Whatever your wishes may be the idea of RACE is not an an idea but a Biological fact.
Rajesh,
How exactly is it a biological fact? I have yet to hear you back up your statement.
seriously rajesh, we’re waiting
huh? really? is “belgian” a different race than “dutch”? how about iyengar, or iyer? who decides these things? wtf?
In response to R. Harricharan’s
at #91: Rajesh, I don’t think comments 76 and 92 should necessarily be construed as rebuttals from the PC faction! I sense genuine puzzlement in #76 and #92. Maybe you want to define what you mean by “biological fact” ? To second-guess where this puzzlement comes from: I recall being present at a press conference called by Craig Venter (of Celera Genomics) where it was stated that approximately 0.01% of the human genome determines those physical traits that distinguish one race from the other. Furthermore, we haven’t heard of any bioinformatic studies that establish even a moderate correlation between the nature of a closely-acting complex (as opposed to a few genes that determine, say, sickle-cell anaemia) of non-physique-related genes and racial type.
Of course, the basis of appearance is biological; but we all knew that! Do you want to say that race is an undeniable social reality based on appearance, which is based in biology ? I do agree with that, but I can kind of see why your more compact phrasing might have led to puzzlement in #76 and #92.
This is 8th Grade biology. but then I did not attend public school in the US but a private Jessuit school overseas.
Race is more than physical appearance and skin color (although these are some features) Race has to do with blood and genetics. There are certain diseases that are race specific eg. Cystic Fibrosis and Tay Sachs. There are more.
There are only three races, Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. every other subdivision has to do with region language and culture and is not biological but ethnic or social based on region and language. The Bushman is different in physical statue and appearance than the Massai but they belong to the same race. The Korean, Japanese, and Chinese are all different but belong to the same race. The Scandanavian is different from the Sicillian and the people of the Indian subcontinent but they belong to the same race. There you go. I never had much patience as a teacher. Do the research yourselves. Just remember ‘political correctness’ = ignorance.
You realize that the three-race theory is antiquated of today’s standards.
Whaaaaat? You left out Australoid!?! The 8th-grade-biology-lynch-mob is gonna come and get you!!! (If the International Australoid-Consciousness Enforcement Posse doesn’t get there first, that is.)
GB, Australoid comes under Negroid.
“Conceptions of race, as well as specific ways of grouping races, vary by culture and over time, and are often controversial for scientific as well as social and political reasons. Some argue that although “race” is a valid taxonomic concept in other species, it cannot be applied to humans.[3] Mainstream scientists have argued that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races delineated vary according to the culture making the racial distinctions; they thus reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity.[4] Today most scientists study human genotypic and phenotypic variation using more rigorous concepts such as “population” and “clinal gradation.” Many anthropologists contend that while the features on which racial categorizations are made may be based on genetic factors, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into groups based on selected hereditary features, are social constructs,[5][6][7][8][9][10][11] whereas a new opinion among geneticists is that it should be a valid mean of classification, although in a modified form based on DNA analysis.[12][13][14][15]” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race
Rajesh, if you read any modern recent topics on race, you will see a lot more complicated debates and questions and ideas than this antiquated three race theory (which smacks of eugenics, if you ask me)