From the New York Times: Who's a Nerd, Anyway?

[XemaSab]

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.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/magazine/29wwln-idealab-t.html?ref=magazine

[ellenfl]

1. the writer makes it sound like nerds

consciously choose to be racist. in my day, a nerd was simply someone who cared more about his/her education than popularity. it was not a conscious decision, it just turned out that way. nerds went to college while the cool kids got married.

ellen fl

[DemBones DemBones]

2. "Nerds" are "hyperwhite"??? Since science and math majors are usually considered

(stereotyped as) "nerds," this "hyperwhite" idea should be news to a lot of black scientists, engineers, professors, physicians, and other health professionals.

I had to laugh at this:

"nerdy clothing is purely practical: pocket protectors, belt sheaths for gadgets, short shorts for excessive heat, etc."

Pocket protectors? :rofl: And slide rules in their belt sheaths, I guess!

Have people really gone back to wearing pocket protectors in California or is Mary Bucholtz having flashbacks to the Fifties and early Sixties?

Nerds wear short shorts in excessive heat? Nobody else in California wears short shorts in excessive heat?

But the first part of that paragraph was even worse: "While a stereotypical black youth, from the zoot-suit era through the bling years, wears flashy clothes, chosen for their aesthetic value." This sounds an awful lot like "Black people have rhythm and are good dancers." In all the schools and colleges where I've taught, black and white kids dressed much the same: jeans and tee shirts or some other type of shirt or sweater. A few people wore more stylish clothes than others but it wasn't the case of blacks dressing more aesthetically or more flashily than whites. Some whites and some blacks were more stylish than other students.

I know there is a problem in high school and probably in lower grades, too, of black kids thinking that making good grades, even answering questions in class, is "acting white." But a lot of white kids also avoid letting the other kids know they have a functioning brain. Nobody wants to be called a brainiac or egghead. And girls get signals early on that science and math are for boys, that female brains can't comprehend such arcane subjects. So this fear of being a nerd/ fear of success is a major educational and social problem.

Until we get past the idea that hitting home runs or kicking field goals or being able to do cartwheels and form human pyramids are more important skills than solving an equation, graphing the results of an experiment, being able to explain what occurs in cellular respiration and photosynthesis, the importance of biodiversity, and the basics of evolutionary theory, other countries are going to continue kicking our butts in science and math.

It should be as cool to be intellectually and/or creatively gifted as to be athletically gifted. The world has room for all sorts of gifts.