NOCs (Nerds of Color)[Essay]

None of this was easy for me personally, because I had to confront my own internalized racism.  There was a part of me that said, no, don’t ask these questions.  It’d be easier to just go with the flow.  Don’t rock the boat.  No one cares about this stuff.  Do you really want to challenge yourself about how you want to be white?  You’re a man of color from Phillips – are you really ready to out yourself as a self-hating nerd?

And you’d think that fellow nerds, regardless of race and gender, would understand given that our status as freaks and geeks and outcasts would give us some humility and common ground to stand on.  Unfortunately, this is not often the case.  Try bringing up issues of race, class, gender, and homophobia on a video game message board and see the vitriolic response you get, no matter how diplomatic you try to be.  Bring up issues of representation and race to fans of Battlestar and Firefly and get told that you’re a killjoy or one of the “PC police” who doesn’t understand what their favorite show is trying to do.  Bring up the relative absence of Asian men in American pop culture and people invariably bring up Bruce Lee – without acknowledging the fact that he was passed over for the television show he created, Kung Fu, for a white actor, and had to go to Hong Kong to find success.  Point out that The Last Airbender has an almost all-white cast and people will say, since they’re animated and fictional, they’re not supposed to be Asian  – while ignoring that, even when the characters are supposed to be Asian, Hollywood makes them white anyway (see the movie 21, based on a true story where almost all of the real life people involved were Asian Americans, or if you need to stay with nerd references, see Bulletproof Monk, where the Asian American character in the comic is replaced by a white guy).

I welcome reasonable debate and discussion, even with people who don’t agree with me.  However, race still touches a deep nerve in the majority of Americans, and the denial of it – this idea that race is no longer a relevant issue – makes it even worse.  It’s hard to have an intelligent discussion when people can just reactively respond by saying things like “my best friend/girlfriend is Asian and doesn’t think that’s racist so you’re wrong”.   And being a nerd as well as a person of color, I understand being defensive.  You always feel like someone is going to make fun of something you hold sacred.  But at what point do you learn from that experience, of being the odd one out, and realize that you may be doing that to someone else – based on their race, or gender, or with whom they decide to partner with?  At what point do you empathize rather than silence?

Sometimes it does get to be too much.  Sometimes I wish I could be that kid in Phillips again, with a bath towel tied around my shoulders waving a flashlight around in the dark, pretending I was a Jedi, pretending that race doesn’t matter.   It’s easier that way.  You’re not going to be popular to anyone by saying that racism exists, even less so when you point out that it exists in almost everything that we love.

But race, and all of these things, they do matter.  In my dreams and in my life, they do.  They shape who I am and how I treat other people.  They influence how I see the world and how I work.  Facing my own internalized hatred was one of the most difficult, and terrible, things I have ever done in my life.  It was ugly and sad and hurt not just me but people I cared deeply about.  There was nothing romantic or noble about it, but it was necessary.

And it’s not like I have any particular cause to be righteous.  As much as I was critical of the way brown people were portrayed in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and all of the Star Wars films, I am still a big fan of both franchises.  I am not without my own contradictions, my own questions.  But I think applying a critical mind to the things we like and love is necessary.

When it comes down to it, having these discussions is necessary, even if those of us who choose to confront it and speak against it are one against a thousand voices shouting us down.  As nerds, as people of color, we are used to insurmountable odds.  We’re used to doing what we think is right and standing up for what we believe in, even when it’s not popular and endangers our lives.  Isn’t that what being a nerd is all about?

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