Homo Sapiens Metaluecus

July 29, 2007 5:01 PM

White! White! White!

Hyperwhite?

White?!
posted by nilihm (74 comments total)

amiwhite?
posted by Citizen Premier at 5:04 PM on July 29, 2007

From the NY Times:

“nerdcore” rappers, who wear pocket protectors and write paeans to computer routing devices, are in vogue

Nice to see that the MSM is out to fucking lunch, as usual.
posted by KokuRyu at 5:05 PM on July 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

Confirmed working New York Times login (via bugmenot):

alextakach : mclift
posted by nilihm at 5:05 PM on July 29, 2007

Nerds as "traitors to whiteness" is an amusing notion. So if the author was trying to amuse me, mission accomplished.
posted by jonson at 5:07 PM on July 29, 2007

Here's a link to the paper cited in the article (17-page PDF).

Here's a list of all her published work.
posted by mdonley at 5:13 PM on July 29, 2007

I thought the 'race traitor' concept was supposed to apply to white people who deliberately gave up the advantages gained by being white in order to combat racism. I'm not sure how well it applies to those who give up (or don't aspire at all to) a certain social status for completely personal motives...seems a bit of a stretch.
posted by frobozz at 5:22 PM on July 29, 2007

And since I realize that few people will read a 17-page PDF, here's her conclusion, which is on page 13:

Conclusion

White nerds inhabited an ambiguous racial position at Bay City High: they were the whitest group but not the prototypical representatives of whiteness. It is likewise difficult to disambiguate nerds’ relationship to white domination. In refusing to exercise the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded, nerds may be viewed as traitors to whiteness. But engaging in nerdy practices may itself be a form of white privilege, since these practices were not as readily available to teenagers of color and the consequences of their use more severe. The use of superstandard English is thus both a rejection of the cool white local norm and an investment in a wider institutional and cultural norm. This ambivalence toward normative practice is evident in Erich’s discourse: he uses “normal” language rather than slang, but he does not “think of anything in a normal way.” In the first use, he aligns himself with “normalness” and against trendiness; in the second use, he disaligns himself from both “normalness” and trendiness. These two valences of normal are akin to the two valences of whiteness in nerd identity: nerds at Bay City High were not normal because they were too normal, not (unmarkedly) white because they were too white.

In other words, the linguistic and other social practices by which nerds were culturally marked with respect to other, cooler, white students, also caused them to be racially marked with respect to both blacks and whites. While the semiotic processes of iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure allowed nerds to challenge local ideologies based on subcultural identity, these same processes also imposed a set of racial ideologies on both nerds and their cooler counterparts, black and white. Thus although the marked hyperwhiteness of nerds undermines the racial project of whiteness as a normative and unmarked construct, it may also shore up racial ideologies of difference and division.
posted by mdonley at 5:23 PM on July 29, 2007

In her publications list, you'll also find a work entitled "Why Be Normal?: Language and Identity Practices in a Community of Nerd Girls" (PDF) from 1999.
posted by mdonley at 5:26 PM on July 29, 2007

Nigga, please.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 5:31 PM on July 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

Wow, someone has way too much time on their hands.

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.

Are you kidding? I've never heard anyone say "It's my observation" in everyday speech, and I know plenty of nerds.

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

I've also never known anyone who would actually wear a pocket protector.

It's interesting that the author of this article considers himself a nerd, and (I would imagine) is white.

This guy is imbuing a racial tone into intellectual nerdyness that I'd certainly never noticed. After all, what does "White culture" even mean? It would seem to me that there is no such thing, really. You could talk about WASP culture, Italian, Irish, whatever. But I don't think there is anything that really differentiates acculturated, assimilated middle class and upper class members of other ethnic groups.

The guy talked about Carlton from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air as a black person acting "nerdy" and therefore funny, but Carlton was always more aristocratic then nerdy. There was never any sense of being a misfit.

Anyway, this really just sounds like some kind of bizarre kind of racism masquerading as cultural analysis. I mean, he's basically using the word "white" to mean "intellectual". It's clear to see how you could call nerds "hyperintelectual." The implication of that is that anti-intellectualism, or a lack of intellectualism is a hallmark of African American people.

I seriously doubt many "nerds" even think about things that way. I doubt many Asian nerds think of themselves as "hyperwhite"
posted by delmoi at 5:31 PM on July 29, 2007 [5 favorites]

I agree, delmoi. Spot on.
posted by nilihm at 5:34 PM on July 29, 2007

I'm currently seeing The Blue in a white background. Not sure how I did that...
posted by ZachsMind at 5:35 PM on July 29, 2007

delmoi writes "I've never heard anyone say 'It's my observation' in everyday speech, and I know plenty of nerds."

Um. I suspect that I did this a lot as a kid. And probably still do it. And I never, never, dropped a terminal 'g'.
posted by orthogonality at 5:35 PM on July 29, 2007

Well, hardly ever.
posted by orthogonality at 5:36 PM on July 29, 2007

come to think of it, there weren't really any black kids in our nerd clique in high school

that may be more a function of there being something like four black kids in my class of 400 though.
posted by maus at 5:44 PM on July 29, 2007

Actually, nerds are really just cerebral jocks, only they get laid less.
posted by jonmc at 5:45 PM on July 29, 2007

Um. I suspect that I did this a lot as a kid.

I did, too. However, as early as high school I began to incorporate Appalachian, beat, and blues jargon/dialect into my everyday speech. I notice the same among other 'nerd' musician friends who played jazz or grew up outside the traditional musical education system (those who played folk instruments, etc.)

Counter-counterculture?
posted by The White Hat at 5:48 PM on July 29, 2007

He hardly ever dropped a "g"
posted by Dr. Twist at 5:49 PM on July 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

White nerds are the new blipsters?
posted by The Straightener at 5:55 PM on July 29, 2007

delmoi has it.

The author appears to suffer from some ideological "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" issues. Also, this person appears to be drawing from many fictional depictions of nerddom, whereas most of my experience with nerdiness - mine and others' - is a bit less broad and cartoony than what's being described here. One gets the sense that the argument came before the observations.

And good catch on identifying Carlton as an aristocrat, not a nerd. He's your garden-variety prep, if anything.

To be perfectly honest, my high school and college experience violated many of the stereotypes out there, which always makes me groan a little when I read stuff like this.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:58 PM on July 29, 2007

The paper itself might be legitimate, other then the sort of crazy semiotics and assorted social-science wankery is that it was apparently a study of one school where "racial" divisions in the student population were strong, and there may have actually been a sort of "standard" whiteness and actual racial cliques. The author of the article, on the other hand, takes the situation at that one school, and applies it to, well, everyone in the U.S.

While that school itself might be one tragic situation, it's not realistic to take the definition of "whiteness" in the school and apply to the world at large. I mean how many "white" people do you know who use the word "blood" to refer to their friends? I think it's pretty unusual. You might find other schools where social groups are equally divided, but I bet the definition of "whiteness" there would be different. Somewhere else you'd find lots of Stereotypical Asian nerds, for example.
posted by delmoi at 6:00 PM on July 29, 2007

I want you black.
posted by rob511 at 6:04 PM on July 29, 2007

While a stereotypical black youth, from the zoot-suit era through the bling years, wears flashy clothes, chosen for their aesthetic value...

Holy shit, talk about a sentence written by and compiled from the observations of a bunch of white mother fuckers who have spent absolutely no time in an urban black neighborhood. This is a stereotypical image created by someone with no exposure for someone with no exposure to anything but MTV.

Newsflash, black kids in the ghetto wear white t-shirts, usually about four sizes too big or maybe a basketball jersey similarly oversized. They don't wear "bling" because bling gets you killed. They don't dress flashy because flashy either gets you beat down out of jealousy or labeled as a faggot. White tees and Dickies are cheap, but mom might only have enough money for a couple pairs, so the "stereotypical" kid I see on the streets when I'm at work is usually in desperate need of a trip to the laundromat. There's nothing ostentatious about actual black youth in actual ghettos. It's usually dirty, tattered and ratty.

For fucks sake rent a car and at least go drive around Brownsville for a minute before you turn your article in.
posted by The Straightener at 6:14 PM on July 29, 2007 [15 favorites]

...the racial privilege upon which white youth cultures are founded...

Say what? For crying out loud.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 6:15 PM on July 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well, I do shop online for writeable media, and have been known to edit wikipedia . . .
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:30 PM on July 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

Speaking of Zoot-suits. The people who wore them were Latino not black. Not that I would expect this moron to care.

Going back to the origional study, I think the author was being oversensitive to some things, for example mentioning one subject using the word "wacked" rather then "wack" as an example of using a "more white" version of the word.

Here is a paragraph that I think neatly encapsulates what the author of the paper is actually saying

Although nerds did not necessarily understand their linguistic and other social practices in particularly racialized terms, these practices could take on racialized meaning in the context of the ideological blackwhite dichotomy that shaped whiteness for European American students at Bay City High. Nerdy teenagers’ deliberate avoidance of slang, for example, indexically displayed their remoteness from the trends not only of white youth culture but of black youth culture as well, since African American slang was a primary source of European American slang.

Remember, the paper is about use of language, and in their use of language the nerds avoid slang. Since slang originates (according to the author) with black people, the avoidance of slang makes the students "more white." This only refers to language, but the NYT author strips almost all of the context and ends up with something pretty weird.
posted by delmoi at 6:32 PM on July 29, 2007

oh, and I'm avoiding the article in the attempt to preserve whatever IQ pointage I haven't already lost this weekend
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:33 PM on July 29, 2007

Remember, the paper is about use of language, and in their use of language the nerds avoid slang.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL ROFLCOPTER

moar fail plox
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:38 PM on July 29, 2007 [9 favorites]

We're sorry for inventing that stuff, and any observations we may have mentioned along the way...
posted by wallstreet1929 at 6:41 PM on July 29, 2007

Actually, I would like to amend my earlier comment and say that it really only applies to my local observations. I think it's really important to realize that black culture, like white culture, or any culture for that matter, is not monolithic and changes radically from place to place. That's why terms like, "ebonics" are horseshit, because it doesn't really take into account the fact that blacks in Philly tend to talk a lot differently from blacks in Houston who talk far differently from blacks in Oakland.

Which brings me to the question of regional qualities of "whiteness." Are southern rednecks nerds because of their hyperwhiteness?
posted by The Straightener at 6:42 PM on July 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

The essence of teenage "nerdiness" to me (a non-scholar!) is not based on any racial identity, but a) a deep and lasting interest in learning and scholarship in any area or areas, and b) the contrasting of that learning and scholarship with a culture (at least "culture" as seen by a high school kid, which can be a pretty narrow view) that rejects the importance of education (and seeks entertainment or athleticism or romance or something else), even if that mainstream culture as seen by nerds doesn't, as delmoi contends, actually exist. Perhaps nerds are just as rebellious and differentiated-from-non-members as any other incarnation of teen social group, but in their rebellion from mainstream teen culture end up praised by adult institutions like universities and employers for their maturity.

On preview: Is nerd-speak less slangy because nerds are in often placed in college-prep classes that require more challenging assignments and work than classes designed for non-nerds? I wonder how many more essays someone in AP English, say, writes than someone in a mainstream English class.
posted by mdonley at 6:44 PM on July 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

meh
posted by caddis at 7:01 PM on July 29, 2007

...semiotic processes of iconization, fractal recursivity, and erasure...

Does this mean anything to anybody?
If it does, is it amenable to treatment?
posted by hexatron at 7:15 PM on July 29, 2007

Speaking of Zoot-suits. The people who wore them were Latino not black. Not that I would expect this moron to care.

They were popular with black people, for sure. In fact, I think they were popular with African-Americans first, if I remember my Afro-Am classes at all.
posted by tristeza at 7:24 PM on July 29, 2007 [1 favorite]

From the Wiki: The Zoot Suit first gained popularity in Harlem jazz culture in the late 1930s where they were initially called "drapes".
posted by Wolof at 7:31 PM on July 29, 2007

Without meaning to, this guy shows his nerd cred in one crucial regard -- he's a spectactularly poor observer of human culture and clearly grew up with more TV friends than real ones.
posted by George_Spiggott at 7:36 PM on July 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

"Terminal G" is my new rapper name.
posted by moss at 7:38 PM on July 29, 2007 [3 favorites]

From the Wiki: The Zoot Suit first gained popularity in Harlem jazz culture in the late 1930s where they were initially called "drapes".

Okay, but the term "zoot suit" comes from Latino culture (again according to wikipedia.)

By the way, by referencing an, um, reference you just outed yourself as a huge nerd, at least according to Mary Bucholtz's research. (The irony is, I'd planned on double checking that before posting. Heh)
posted by delmoi at 7:47 PM on July 29, 2007

Gosh, Mr. Sulzberger, you sure are hip.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:01 PM on July 29, 2007

this guy is like an old-timey racist anthropologist in the bush. he's documenting something real but he's unconciously covering it with baggage.

i think he's still on to something with the nerdiness as ultra-white thing, tho his efforts illustrate it are often hokey. also, it's a very dynamic reaction. the way folks who consider themselves intellectually and culturally elite place themselves in relation to "black culture" is a strange dance to perceive, indeed. It's full of irony and liberal guilt and all sorts of silly back bending.

it's a convoluted subject that would take a keener and more involved mind than mine to detail in any meaningful way, but I've certainly seen inklings of this phenomenon in the indie music scene, which is propagated by mostly educated white folks with a an air intellectualism and is based around VERY Anglo-centric ideas and themes, practically horrified of borrowing culture directly from black folks without a series of ironic filters and distortions.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:34 PM on July 29, 2007

which is to say, nuh-uh to delmoi.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:36 PM on July 29, 2007

Carlton's not a real nerd? He's "aristocratic"? For serious? I suppose you think his arm-flailing dance was all the rage at Lady Beneficence's annual cotillion.

Leave it to the nerds to split hairs on this point. You're cutting your taxonomy too finely. The author's talking about nerddom as a phylum, not a subspecies. Computer nerds, literary nerds, "aristocratic" nerds: all nerds.

In my observation.
posted by painquale at 8:53 PM on July 29, 2007

In College (mine had a high percentage of nerds) I was friends with this one girl who was somewhat nerdish. Her two roommates were even nerdier and seemed to have no friends and always ate meals with my friend, so I got to know them.

One roommate was into (as I recall) History of Theater. She spoke precise English (almost Boarding School British but not that extreme). She was interesting and mostly a person of the mind with ideas and ideals rather than being all that connected with the real world (other than the world of Theater which is not quite the real world).

Then one day a rather crazy black cafeteria worker named Crystal came to our table and started yelling at this meek girl that she was black trying to pass as white. After that treatment she wound up eating at the black tables and I never again had the opportunity to engage her in casual conversation.

My friend wound up dropping out and can't be found with Google. The outed roommate now seems to have an academic job related to theater, and the other roommate (with the least personality) now seems to be a noted legal scholar.
posted by MonkeySaltedNuts at 9:03 PM on July 29, 2007

MonkeySaltedNuts: Holy shit. If that happened at my school the cafeteria worker would have been fired, for sure. (Actually most of the 'front line' cafeteria workers are students themselves, so that kind of thing probably wouldn't happen)

it's a convoluted subject that would take a keener and more involved mind than mine to detail in any meaningful way, but I've certainly seen inklings of this phenomenon in the indie music scene...

Stop right there. No one cares what hipsters do or think. And hipsters != nerds.
posted by delmoi at 10:11 PM on July 29, 2007

Okay, but the term "zoot suit" comes from Latino culture (again according to wikipedia.)

I think the wiki might be overreaching itself a bit there; "zoot" for suit" just sounds like hepcat slang to me. This site seems to agree with that proposition, although the Zoot Suit riots (in LA in 1943) were certainly a Mexican-American thing.
posted by Wolof at 10:43 PM on July 29, 2007

I hereby declare this article "wack", because cracka is straight buggin', yaddadamean?
posted by Down10 at 10:48 PM on July 29, 2007

I often heard geeks caveat an actually observation with "it’s my observation;” the same dumb fucks that began an argumentative essay with "it's my opinion."

I was fond of “it’s my observation the your adrenalin is approaching dangerous levels." Then I'd knock their teeth in

:>)
posted by lacus at 10:53 PM on July 29, 2007

if you think that is is even mildly acceptable to use this symbol: "!=" in communication you are an uber-nerd. zits, pocket protectors, slide rules (for the retro-nerds), oily hair, unbrushed teeth, ill-fittng pants, plaid with plaid, and more just can not compare with that sort or nerdom.
posted by caddis at 10:55 PM on July 29, 2007

and if you are a real nerd you will even correct your many, many spelling mistakes

it
posted by caddis at 11:02 PM on July 29, 2007

At the school where I teach, kids that articulate and use polysyllabic words are accused of "talking schoolgirl/boy." I've heard the (very few) white kids accused of this during lunch, as well as plenty of black and Hispanic kids. However, they would never accuse someone of talking like a white person, unless they were trying to start a fight. "White" is a serious insult.

Seems to me like they see nerdy/school-ish as a separate culture that definitely ties in to black identity, though certainly not a desirable one.
posted by honeydew at 11:27 PM on July 29, 2007

Well, I do shop online for writeable media, and have been known to edit wikipedia . . .

NERDCORE RAPPER!

(points finger and opens mouth in best body-snatchers style)

*SHREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK*
posted by davejay at 11:32 PM on July 29, 2007

nth-ing delmoi's sentiment. "This guy is imbuing a racial tone into intellectual nerdyness that I'd certainly never noticed."

At least based on my experience, that's what a significant percentage of today's academia does. They take some basically random factoid about life, and then pull some bizarre "racial" connection out of it. They seem to have some sort of a who's-dick-is-bigger contest going on, based on who can find racial "undertones" in the most ridiculous places.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:35 PM on July 29, 2007 [2 favorites]

Funny. These "No racism here" conversations never seem to happen when I am ethnically mixed groups.
posted by srboisvert at 2:56 AM on July 30, 2007

Mary Bucholtz is an acquaintance of mine, and a fine scholar. The ignorance and antiintellectualism in this thread is pathetic.
posted by spitbull at 4:54 AM on July 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

lacus : I was fond of “it’s my observation the your adrenalin is approaching dangerous levels." Then I'd knock their teeth in

Are we supposed to be impressed? It's my observation that you sound like a prick.
posted by Drexen at 5:01 AM on July 30, 2007

This reminds me, there was this very odd black girl in high school who was in a few of my classes. Probably was in all AP/IB classes as well, seemed wealthy, but she was odd. Wore put-together outfits and hats, always spoke very primly, had an affected manner of speaking, I'm guessing a "Carlton" would be most similar, but not quite. On reflection, she might have been someone who I could have been friends with, but once while peer-reviewing each other's papers, she asked me if English was my first language, ignorant bitch. And that was the end of that.

Too bad. In a sea of white/Asian/Jewish students, she and I always stood out as one of only a handful of darker-skinned kids.
posted by lychee at 5:09 AM on July 30, 2007

White people walk like this. Black people walk like this.
posted by Pollomacho at 5:11 AM on July 30, 2007

The article was an interesting thought experiment, but on reflection, I think no significant substance within.

Caution: The above style of writing may contain traces of hyperwhite.

Also, nerds are the same even in countries where (unlike the USA) the not-nerds don't have the described black-culture influence. Author needs to travel more.
posted by -harlequin- at 5:20 AM on July 30, 2007

Nerd attacks
posted by caddis at 6:33 AM on July 30, 2007

nerds are the same even in countries where the not-nerds don't have the described black-culture influence

Uh, not really. The American nerd is almost as separate from the European nerd as he/she is different from the Japanese otaku.

For instance we don't really have the term * insert-broad-generalization-here * "hipster" in Europe. This group of people are often refereed to as nerds of some kind instead. That is just one silly example but uh, yeah...
posted by uandt at 7:13 AM on July 30, 2007

Point to Note: When the author says Whiteness, he/she is not necessarily discussing how white people act, rather, how white people (and people of color) believe that white people should act. Thus, nerds, who do not conform to normative standards of whiteness, are still emulating very, very white ideals and archetypes. This holds true regardless of the person's race. Everyone has been attacking this concept as if it were assigning people into definite categories (nerd/non-nerd, acting white/not acting white, etc). That's not what these terms, nor this article, are doing.
posted by Subcommandante Cheese at 8:22 AM on July 30, 2007

You may be interested in some recent commentary on this issue by Yankovic (Lynwood, 2007).
posted by Drexen at 9:34 AM on July 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Straightener -- I think the most interesting sentence is the last: "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." The theory seems to be that nerds assert a stereotyped form of whiteness (that's different from "actual" whiteness) as a way to oppose popular culture in general, which is increasingly stereotypically (if not actually) black. It's about resisting assimilation and creating nonconformity by not embracing the dominant cultural forms. It's not about race realities, really.

What I'm not sure about is why Buchholtz assumes that the manners/language adopted by the nerds in opposition to popular culture is "white" or "anti-black." Isn't there a third option -- simply "different"?
posted by footnote at 10:10 AM on July 30, 2007

Whiteness Studies.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:38 AM on July 30, 2007

Mary Bucholtz is an acquaintance of mine, and a fine scholar. The ignorance and antiintellectualism in this thread is pathetic.

I do believe that people are slinging their snark at the newspaper article, which is stupid, as opposed to the original study, which is not.

Bucholtz's study itself has some interesting points, although I had a few issues with it. I really do wish she had the ability to visit more high schools. I realize that time and money are too short to send her on a national tour, but some diversity of experience would have bolstered her strong suits and questioned her simplifications. I also dislike the use of the term "hyperwhite" - it makes it sound like whiteness is a two dimensional line, like a little railroad, as opposed to a three-dimensional space, metaphorically speaking. It doesn't communicate well her intriguing ideas, and it makes her sound more surprised than she should be that the nerds occupy this ambiguous space.

Also, I disagree with her assertion that the Columbine killers were nerds. According to the way she herself is defining nerdiness, the labeling doesn't fit at all.

Quibbles aside, it's worth a look. The paper is an interesting start to what could be a very, very good book. I'd love nothing more than for this paper to turn into a big, fat, smart study which fully explores how teenage nerdiness ties into power at large.
posted by Sticherbeast at 12:33 PM on July 30, 2007 [1 favorite]

Some of my best friends are black nerds.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 1:14 PM on July 30, 2007

I do believe that people are slinging their snark at the newspaper article, which is stupid, as opposed to the original study, which is not.

Nah, the article's crap, too. The author suggests that nerds deliberately use superstandard english to distance themselves socially from their "cooler" peers, which implies a level of social perception that just does not fit within the nerd rubric. In order to "reject locally dominant social norms" you have to be aware of them, and the stereotypical nerd just ain't.

Couching it in terms of whiteness and blackness only muddies the issue.
posted by logicpunk at 2:26 PM on July 30, 2007

Nah, the article's crap, too. The author suggests that nerds deliberately use superstandard english to distance themselves socially from their "cooler" peers, which implies a level of social perception that just does not fit within the nerd rubric. In order to "reject locally dominant social norms" you have to be aware of them, and the stereotypical nerd just ain't.

I think on some level that's true, though. At least from the snippets she presents, the kids do have some self-awareness and pride in their identity. That said, the way she couches that point - especially on the level of intentionality - is overly simplistic. I'm surprised she didn't delve further into the fact that part of the reasons why nerds speak "superstandard" English - as well as why they are many times outside the mainstream - is because they don't relate to their "cooler" young peers, so they wind up speaking like the adults around them, from whom they receive support and encouragement.

And even that's not meant to be a blanket answer as to why nerds may have some "superstandard" aspects to their speech. I don't think there is one. There are many reasons. I maintain that the article has some interesting ideas, but like a lot of work in this vein, it's too simple, there isn't enough research, and it hews too closely to the author's ideology.

I also think that she's stretching and compressing the definition of "nerd" at various points in the article, either intentionally or not, so as to make her simple arguments seem more coherent than they are.

...

Beyond that, the idea that there is a clique of capital-N Nerds who are the book-smart outcasts has always reeked of a fantasy to me. High school, which I left only 7 years ago, was FAR more complicated than that, which is why the whole premise of studying nerdiness sounds more like a study of cultural depictions as opposed to any kind of reality where you can interview the real deal. And on that level, too, I think the article fudges things between how things are, how things are perceived to be, and so on down the meta-ladder - is she studying how nerds act, what people think of nerds, what people think of the whole nerd/non-nerd relationship, fictional depictions of nerds, or what? Once again, the fudging exists to make it seem like there's more "there" there than there is.

And this article was the product of a year of research? Good God. I honestly don't see why it should have taken longer than a week to get the data, especially when you see how undernourished it is.

On the plus side, she seems quite intelligent and there are some fresh thoughts here. She's breaking new ground, and if she can break out of the Whiteness Studies doldrums, there could be an interesting book at the end of it.

So yeah. I don't think the article's "crap," but there are problems.

...

Oh, also, I hate reading stuff like this:

Hartigan’s work suggests that there may be other styles of whiteness that are racially marked due to their lack of compliance with local ideologies of racial appropriateness."

GOSH. DO YOU THINK. I feel like I just read an engineering paper in which someone had written "there may be objects larger than cars."

Also, when you start noticing that nerds and hillbillies cannot be easily marked racially, you should start taking that as a giant sign that racial rubrics do not apply and should be abandoned.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:52 PM on July 30, 2007

"The article does not mention the true common characteristic of nerds: they are numerate, i.e. conversant in the language of mathematics - an odd omission for a linguist. This omission can be explained by the fact that Berkeley-style multi-culturalism is threatened by numeracy, the development of which is the hallmark of Western Civilization and the historical wellspring of western economic and military success. Consequently, it is incumbent on multi-culturalists to discredit whenever and wherever possible those who are numerate." American Thinker Blog

I think he's on to something: the true sign of nerdiness is math. People who understand math learn to value rigor, precision, and clear communication.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 3:40 PM on July 30, 2007

I'm surprised she didn't delve further into the fact that part of the reasons why nerds speak "superstandard" English - as well as why they are many times outside the mainstream - is because they don't relate to their "cooler" young peers, so they wind up speaking like the adults around them, from whom they receive support and encouragement.

That would have undermined her argument, though, which is that speaking superstandard english is a choice made in order to distance nerds from their peers, rather than a result of of nerds already being outside the mainstream.

I also think that she's stretching and compressing the definition of "nerd" at various points in the article, either intentionally or not, so as to make her simple arguments seem more coherent than they are.


Which is why the article strikes me as crap. The definition can be manipulated in any way that supports her thesis, even to the point where "nerd" can mean someone who makes nuanced social choices to reject mainstream cultural mores. Her conclusion is a mess, obsessed with an ambiguity that exists only because of her suspect take on the definition of nerd.
posted by logicpunk at 4:19 PM on July 30, 2007

I think he's on to something: the true sign of nerdiness is math. People who understand math learn to value rigor, precision, and clear communication.

That's a good point.

Idle thought: if you are not communicating very much with your body in social settings, you are going to make up for the lack of detail with an increased effort to express oneself verbally in a precise fashion. Much of teenage slang is accompanied by "talking with your body," which nerds are not typically known to do. I'm not saying that nerds don't gesticulate or "talk with their hands" - I'm talking about the way a nerd will assert dominance in a classroom setting, through superstandard verbosity, as opposed to the way a jock can assert his dominance, in other settings, through body language.

Someone socially capable, for example, will be learned in the ability to dress, carry, and move around in such a way as to be charming and appealing. That person will be popular and go on fun dates and all that high school jazz. The stereotypical nerd, however, will not be able to do such things, and so the nerd's abilities and goals shift to other things.

...

That would have undermined her argument, though, which is that speaking superstandard english is a choice made in order to distance nerds from their peers, rather than a result of of nerds already being outside the mainstream.

Hey, if it's undermining her argument, then she should change her argument! But you know that.

I didn't get from the article that she felt that nerds spoke superstandardly purely as an intentional act to distance themselves from their peers. Either way, I think it's obvious to anyone who knows how people work that it is, to some degree or another, a combination of both intentional and unintentional factors which would lead to anyone speaking in any way at all, let alone "superstandard English."

Her conclusion is a mess, obsessed with an ambiguity that exists only because of her suspect take on the definition of nerd.

I agree with you, although for whatever reason I'm taking a "glass half full" take on the paper. I'd like to see someone seriously study nerdiness, and even a shaky start is a start of something.

...

At the risk of joining the dogpile: I'm staggered that she's been studying this for 12 years. I didn't see that at first. The first time I read the article, I thought she was 24 or something, fresh into grad school.
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:32 PM on July 30, 2007

I didn't get from the article that she felt that nerds spoke superstandardly purely as an intentional act to distance themselves from their peers.


Maybe it's not purely for distancing purposes, but she does put a great deal of emphasis on it as a purposeful behavior in that respect:

"[nerds] employ a superstandard language variety to reject the youth culture norm of coolness."

I agree that it would be interesting to see good research on the subject, but I worry about that happening if work like this is representative.
posted by logicpunk at 5:01 PM on July 30, 2007

The article does not mention the true common characteristic of nerds: they are numerate, i.e. conversant in the language of mathematics - an odd omission for a linguist. This omission can be explained by the fact that Berkeley-style multi-culturalism is threatened by numeracy, the development of which is the hallmark of Western Civilization and the historical wellspring of western economic and military success.

Huh? I thought them Arabs had a rather significant role in thinking up the maths. But you know, I'm just a nerdy stickler for historical detail in that way, don't mind me.
posted by footnote at 7:44 AM on July 31, 2007

Huh? I thought them Arabs had a rather significant role in thinking up the maths. But you know, I'm just a nerdy stickler for historical detail in that way, don't mind me.

Very true, but by now it's been absorbed into the Western canon. Read his "Berkeley-style multi-culturalism" snark not as an attack on non-Western learning, but as concerning the stereotypical nerd's preference for math and the "hard" sciences over the "soft" sciences and liberal arts. According to what I, at least, consider the typical definition, poindexters with pocket protectors are more likely to be doing calculus for fun than reading Deleuze on the beach.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:48 PM on July 31, 2007