Monday, July 30, 2007
Too white
Instapundit points us to some reviews of a New York Times Magazine article about how a Santa Barbara linguist, Mary Bucholtz, concluded that "nerds" are those who act "hyperwhite" in the sense of rejecting black culture. (The "cool" white kids are those that act "black," apparently) Anyway, it's a painful read, so read it through the reviews. In particular, the Jerome J. Schmitt notes that:
In sum, I believe that this article and study reveal a lot more about the racial bigotry and monomania of the NY Times and swaths of the liberal arts and social sciences than it does about nerds. The money quote from the article:
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." Yeah. (insert sigh here)
Let me make a guess: You will never find a single nerd who is a nerd because she wants to engage in "rebellion against the cool white kids and their use of black culture." There is no political statement being made about how superior we nerds are because we refuse to exercise white privilege by adapting the culture of other races. We're superior because we're smarter than everyone else. Duh.
The Schmitt review points out another potential problem with the thesis:
The paragons of "nerdom" are those enrolled in -- or teaching -- advanced degree programs in computer science, engineering or the hard sciences. Since this population includes many, many Chinese, Japanese, Asian Indian and Koreans - a lot of whom are foreign born and educated - it will probably come as a surprise to most of them that they are acting "Hyperwhite".
Dr. Bucholtz could easily have ascertained the facts about the racial diversity of nerds by walking around Berkeley's campus and crossing the threshold of any of the "hard-science" departments. Instead, it appears that her "research" consisted of watching dated Hollywood movies that poke fun at socially-inept white nerds. Perhaps one of the reasons why nerds seem "hyperwhite" (or rather, "antiblack," which would be the more sensible explanation of the thesis) is because blacks are stereotyped as failures in everything nerds are stereotyped as excelling in, and vice versa. When you discount blacks who emerge as successes in what would probably be described as "white culture" by these folks, saying they "aren't black enough," and you assert that any kind of non-academic prowess is "black," then yeah, I guess nerds are antiblack. Even the black ones. But since the complete absence of blacks wouldn't change anything about nerds and what role they play, it seems odd to tie the definition of nerds to blackness.
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