Nerdiness as "hyperwhite"

[John McVey]

I came across this while perusing the blogosphere. A 'researcher' started looking into what constituted 'nerdiness' recently. According to a New York Times article, it took her a solid twelve years to come up with the theory that nerds are just people acting "hyperwhite." This is supposedly evidenced by nerds declining to appropriate African-American culture. It goes downhill from there.

Bloggers have had a field-day with this nonsense, and have written about some valid points. Not the least of its faults is the fact that "nerd" = "extreme white" is absurd on its face. Even without going further into things like knowledge of history, it is patently obvious that there are nerds of all colours and creeds. As bloggers pointed out, there were quite a few non-white nerds in the Revenge movies. In a more serious movie, "Higher Learning", the poor-white-trash engineering student used his inability to keep up with his richer and more studious Asian peers as an excuse to shack up with neo-nazis and act out violently. In neither movie were the non-white nerds mere token inclusions but were representative of reality. As to that reality taken for granted by these movies, the fact that Asian children on average have higher grades than whites is a controversy in its own right, which Ms Bucholtz should have been very aware of as it is also connected to whites' grades being higher on average than blacks or latinos, itself part of the very social factors she is trying to condemn nerdiness over!

The research also betrays either a pig-ignorance, or deliberate overlooking, of history. Architecture as a science was an ancient Egyptian invention. Archaeologists even know the name of one of the world's first true architects, Imhotep, Chief Physician and Vizier to the Pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep was the introducer of the use of new building materials such as stone, and designer of the earliest pyramids and other structures constructed on a scale never before seen. Many other examples of great engineering projects are also Egyptian. There are also the great mathematicians, engineers and metallurgists of ancient India and China, later contemporaries of the ancient Egyptians and carrying on through to Roman times. Leaving aside the "white" Greeks and Romans there are the feats accomplished in the Middle-East, both before and after muslim conquest. The achievements and splendor of Persia and Mesopotamia, both in theory and practice, are legendary. For a time, the middle-east was the most advanced region in the world as muslim scholars and scientists had created both amazing feats both in intellectual realms (eg cryptanalysis) and technological works (great engineering works not seen since the height of Roman times). Geber is a famous muslim nerd, after whom the word "gibberish" was coined because of the code he wrote in to hide his work from the religious authorities. The Chinese, and other civilisations in Asia, had also continued to develop mathematics, sciences, and engineering. And so on.

Even the most cursory of glances at the history of mathematics, science and engineering should have given abundant clues to them being around long before northern Europeans started being civilised and intellectual - to the point that one could say that, while civilisation as such has been around for 10,000 years, north- and west-Europeans have been civilised for fewer than 1,000. I find it inconceivable that she and her peers at UCSB be unaware of any part of this, for which alone she should have been laughed out of her grant money a long time ago. The reason they don't laugh her out of seriousness is because of their commitment to multiculturalism. Jerome J. Schmitt touches on the matter:

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.

He is right, as far as he goes. Mathematics and science are universals, totally independent of skin colour. Reason is a universal trait, available to all human beings who care to employ it. This is a slap in the face to all that the multiculturalists hold dear. A is A, and you are always free to recognise this fact, no matter who you are or where you come from. That is one of the cornerstones of western civilisation, never explicitly discovered by other civilisations. ARI scholar Onkhar Ghate once pointed out that one thing that separates western civilisation from all others is precisely the fact that unlike in other civilisations skin colour is totally irrelevant to membership in western civilisation. This is possible because that cornerstone holds independently of skin colour. Anyone can choose to be western by accepting it and all that follows from it. Many non-whites have done exactly that to their great benefit - which fact the multiculturalists hate with a passion.

The idea that any focus upon academic excellence and intellectual pursuits is inherently a 'white' thing is absolutely ludicrous, and should have been blatantly apparent to Ms Bucholtz right from the start. This 'research' is up there with the fiasco of Alan Sokal's 'Transgressing the boundaries'. This idiocy doesn't just impugn her character (academic and personal), it is an embarrassment to the entire UCSB faculty of which she is a part, and in turn of the pitiful state of humanities departments in general. Her work is a demonstration of the sheer willful and apparently self-made stupidity of anti-reason humanities departments, having sunk into the black hole that is multiculturalism and its attendant rejection of objectivity.

JJM

(Edit: fixed some spelling errors)

Edited August 4, 2007 by John McVey

[Tenure]

So I'm not just too white and nerdy?

[LaszloWalrus]

What about Steve Urkel?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Urkel

[Thales]

From one of your links: American Thinker Blog

Sunday's New York Times included an article by Benjamin Nugent entitled Who's a Nerd, Anyway? that reported on a 11-year study completed at UC Berkeley by linguist Mary Bucholtz, in which she concludes that "nerds" act "Hyperwhite" and reject any cultural influences from black America.

She’s a postmodernist linguist, so take her at her word!

So, if you want to be intelligent you are a “nerd”, not “cool”, “hyperwhite”, and a "racist". Beautiful.

Clearly the terms “nerd” and “hyperwhite” are pejorative terms. Being a “nerd” means you can’t be “cool”, and being white, why that’s frowned upon these days. This would mean that just being white means you’re a racist, and whiteness is not cool. Multiculturalists really do display an unending hatred for white people. Being a “nerd” has always had a negative connotation, but she has managed to give it an evil connotation, i.e. turn nerds into racists.

It’s also interesting to extrapolate this out further. These pomos are likely hypocrites, because if it’s not cool to be smart and numerate, then it’s not cool to own the products of the smart and numerate. It’s not cool to own a Lamborghini Diablo, it’s not cool to ingest disease fighting drugs, it’s not cool to fly in airplanes. In short, modern society is uncool! Persumably what these people want is a primitive life, and maybe they even want death. That’s “cool”. Hey, now doesn’t that fall in line with their belief system?

What this dumb broad doesn’t realize is that being smart and numerate is a way to conquer nature. The smarter and more numerate we are, the better we are going to be able to survive. That’s why we purse these things, lady, not to appease your personal racial prejudices.

You never know how ideas in this world will shake out, and these multicultalists have got one nasty toxic brew they’ve cooked up. At the end of the day, pomos are just geeky, uncool wusses with evil motivations.

One of my favorite quotes seems appropriate here “The weak shall inherit the earth, the rest of us shall go to the stars!” The pomo nerds have made their choice.

I love it when an argument comes together.

Edited August 4, 2007 by Thales

[DavidOdden]

From one of your links: American Thinker Blog

It's sad when people screw up simple things. As one can see, she is not at Berkeley, she's at UCSB. Santa Barbara is orders of magnitude stranger than Berkeley.

She’s a postmodernist linguist, so take her at her word!

Just because she is hired in a linguistics department doesn't make her an actual linguist. Anyhow, here's her nerd paper from Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, but there's a bigger load of papers here under Journal Articles, if one is interested in a bigger load.

[John McVey]

What about Steve Urkel?

Urkel and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air copped a serve in the NY Times article by Nugent as being mockeries based on the notion of there being no genuine black nerds.

JJM

[Olex]

It’s also interesting to extrapolate this out further. These pomos are likely hypocrites, because if it’s not cool to be smart and numerate, then it’s not cool to own the products of the smart and numerate.

Right. They want to have both things. Look down on intelligence and have products of intelligence.

I think there is a common approach here as well at how to get those products. The plan is to find some kind of job where not much is needed to know and be done, but yet be paid consistently well enough to have those products built by ... "blank out". (Yes, I'm quoting Ayn Rand - I always found "blank out" an interesting and effective psychological description of the process inside those mind.) This is often found in phrases, such as: "Work to live, not live to work." Of all the times I heard this spoken it always had a negative (even if hidden) connotation towards work. Work and intelligence is an ugly necessity to those kind of people. Yuck.

One of my favorite quotes seems appropriate here “The weak shall inherit the earth, the rest of us shall go to the stars!”

Nice, this can be used as a way to answer back to the first half of the quote. I'd imagine it would be very funny.