*marking article on race and nerdiness*

[robin_anne_reid]

I have to find time to learn these new online bookmarking programs--after the encyclopedia is done, that will be my new project! Until then, a quick link to mark a linguistics article gakked from The Language Log on "nerdiness" as a racialized category (superwhite or hyperwhite behavior). The link only goes to a summary, but I'll order a pdf file from Interlibrary Loan if my university's fulltext databases don't already link to it!. (Also wonder how gendered that term is--I remember some complaints about past memes on nerdiness or geekiness that skewed more toward math/science geekiness and not humanities geekiness, which emphasizes gendered group geekiness)

This has got to fit into the growing debates on constructions of race and racism in fandoms.....

ETA: Since I'll be reading this paper at a conference in England to an international audience, I've realized (thanks to the comments) I might need to give some background on the peculiar "American" (I put it in quotes because it's actually the U.S., but part of this imperial notion of ourselves as a nation has been claiming the whole continent) ideas of culture/race/language/self-perceptions, especially the "talking white" and "wiggers" debates:

http://sitemaker.umich.edu/356.pitts/ogbu_theory_

http://www.socialwork.uiuc.edu/people/faculty/blackJanCarter.html

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/perry032/impossible/spring_reading.html

http://www.hawaii.edu/satocenter/pace/14-book%20report.htm

http://www.news.uiuc.edu/gentips/02/07white.html

http://astro.ocis.temple.edu/~ruby/aaa/matt.html

ETA the second: Thanks to cryptoxin who gave me this link!

Race, Sex and Nerds: from Black Geeks to Asian-American Hipsters by Ron Eglash, a 2002 piece.

Comments

[dracschick.livejournal.com]

there was an article on nerdiness in the New York Times magazine section today, Sunday.

[st-crispins.livejournal.com]

The issue was discussed in the Sunday NY Times. Here's a link to itthe article online:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/magazine/29wwln-idealab-t.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1185750567-5asrxevK1q/obADZW2bXCA

[heyiya.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the articles yet... But I gotta say, I know multiple nerds of colour who would have more than a few issues with the idea that nerdiness is 'hyperwhite' behaviour, however dominated by whiteness many locations and products of geek culture may be.

Stupid question

[tournevis.livejournal.com]

Wasn't Steve Erkle a nerd?

[cryptoxin.livejournal.com]

She links to the PDF of the article on her CV (http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/cv.html) (scroll down to publications).

It's an interesting article. It's based on fieldwork done in 1995-6, and the broader cultural status of nerds has changed significantly over the last decade. I wonder if there's been any corresponding changes in the patterns and dynamics that she describes.

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I posted this response elsewhere:

How *utterly* racist and obliviating.

Nerdiness is *not* hyperwhiteness. It's origin is among the Jewish
scientists who emigrated to America. The role models for an entire
generation of nerds were the nuclear emigrees and Werner von Braun.
The precision of speech descends from the "English as a second
language" phenomenon.

Oh, that artcle made my blood boil. It's typically American in seeing
only two real "races".