The 7/29 New York Times Won’t Stop, Can’t Stop

This is dedicated to the robot person from the previous post, obvi.
But yeah -- It just. Keeps. Giving. We will continue to write about the 7/29/07 New York Times (Magazine) article-by-image-by-article until it's exhausted. And I want to keep this brief, because I've had enough with nerds for the day, but there was yet another relevant article in this issue of the Magazine. It's called "Who's a Nerd, Anyway?" and no, it's different from the robot cover story. I could write a whole post on it... or I could just let you chew this one over:
By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white.
Sleep well!
--JIM NEWELL




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August 2nd, 2007 at 9:40 pm
best. editors. ever.
August 2nd, 2007 at 9:44 pm
best. editors. ever.
August 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Interesting, this correlation between nerdiness and whiteness… I thought the article was going to go in the direction of stereotyping other types of ethnic categories (Jewish-ness, Asian-ness) but I guess it didn’t go there…
August 3rd, 2007 at 11:00 am
Wasn’t this one of the underlying subtexts in 1984’s “Revenge of the Nerds”?
After being rejected by all the other (mostly white) national fraternities, the nerds ended up becoming a chapter of a national black fraternity (Lambda, Lambda, Lamda). And in the end its the African American brothers of from other chapters of Tri-Lam that forcefully defend the nerds from the (all white) jocks of Addams College
August 3rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
@Skolnik: You are correct. But to move that idea from absurd comedy to straight-faced academic theorizing takes some SERIOUSLY good dope.