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Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

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Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#61

Post by subwindow »

prime0196 wrote: post #42

Why are we assuming that all nerds are smart? My high school had several "dumb" nerds (Napoleon Dynamite-ish). Nerds are people who are socially inept. Add intelligence to a nerd and all you have is an intelligent nerd, he has not moved up the social ladder at all. The real question should be "Why are smart black kids with no social skills unpopular?" but that wouldn’t be much of a question, would it? They’re unpopul…

As far as I understand it, you're talking about dorks, not nerds.

Nerd: Very Smart, socially inept

Geek: Smart, somewhat socially competent

Dork: Not smart, socially inept

That also explains why most people prefer to be called geeks.

Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#62

Post by dangoldin »

byrneseyeview wrote: post #16
baha_man wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'The most popular destination for asylum seekers of all nationalities in 2007 was the US, with an estimated 49,200 new asylum claims' http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7301985.stm

Jewish immigrants from the former USSR are extremely successful in the US, even though they weren't quite voluntary immigrants.

My family came over from the USSR in the late 80s and although I was too young to remember the details, my parents told me that the USSR did not make it easy to leave: they had to go through a whole slew of questions that tried to show that they were perfectly well off in the USSR and there was no persecution.

Their story makes it seem to me that it would have taken a more than voluntary effort to leave the USSR, whether you were a Jew or not.

As an aside, before the mass immigration of the Soviet Jewry there was a whole group of people called the Refuseniks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refusenik) which were denied the right to immigrate but were not allowed to go back to their jobs.

There was a very good documentary made about them recently (http://www.refusenikmovie.com/) that I recommend watching if you are interested in this topic.

Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#63

Post by helveticaman »

Maybe black kids show a lot more bigotry in all forms, since they are not restrained in almost any way in that sense (they are answerable for sexism though). A white person that says he or she hates black people is considered a bigot, but a black person that says he or she hates white people isn't really criticized. Same probably goes for hating nerds. Incidentally, in black society, being a nerd is sometimes termed "acting white."

Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#64

Post by huherto »

1gor wrote: post #23

This whole 'nerd' vs 'jock' meme seems to be a fairly typical situation of 'invest' vs 'consume'. A young kid has no other assets apart of time. You can spend you time being popular NOW, at the expense of studies and other form of self-enrichment. Sports (with their short fitness time-span) are not really an investment, unless you are a really talented athlete. So, by investing your time wisely as a kid you have a go…

I think sports is a great investment. In teaches you discipline, teamwork and helps you gain social confidence. Great assets to have in your life.

Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#65

Post by prime0196 »

subwindow wrote: post #61
prime0196 wrote: post #42

Why are we assuming that all nerds are smart? My high school had several "dumb" nerds (Napoleon Dynamite-ish). Nerds are people who are socially inept. Add intelligence to a nerd and all you have is an intelligent nerd, he has not moved up the social ladder at all. The real question should be "Why are smart black kids with no social skills unpopular?" but that wouldn’t be much of a question, would it? They’re unpopul…

As far as I understand it, you're talking about dorks, not nerds. Nerd: Very Smart, socially inept Geek: Smart, somewhat socially competent Dork: Not smart, socially inept That also explains why most people prefer to be called geeks.

In hindsight you're classifying these individuals as Geeks, Nerds, Dorks, but to an average high schooler these terms are synonymous unless you actually belonged to one of these groups and felt the need to create a hierarchy :)

Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#66

Post by zasz »

rms wrote: post #48
zasz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a fairly atypical school district in Silicon Valley where you didn't have bullies beating kids up, so I probably can't understand what everyone else is talking about. In my experience, however, you only got shunned and had severe unpopularity if you were lacking in fairly basic social skills--like, say, not throwing a tantrum after turning six. To me, it seemed like being average and sort of blending in by…

Are you younger? I graduated high school in 2004 and it was a lot better than suburban high school in the past. This was at a reasonably wealthy, mostly white suburban high school near Pittsburgh (two turnpike exits from Paul Graham's high school, which was Pittsburgh's first uber-developed suburb, Monroeville). At my high school, the people who had in middle school been popular, had mostly gotten into hard drugs and…

Yes, class of 2005. Most people in Palo Alto are pretty gung-ho about sending their babies off to a Top 20 college, so being smart got you respect. The only people I could think of who I would consider ostracized in school were those who were incredibly annoying or awkward to be around, i.e. it was a matter of social skills, not being smart. I do realize I went to an atypical high school, but if you're socially incompetent, you may not recognize that your social problems arise from your social incompetence. That's why I'm a little suspicious of pg when he claims that he's seen both sides of the popularity scale and that he now knows the magic formulas to apply if he had to travel back in time.

Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#67

Post by zasz »

maxklein wrote: post #44

To copy the comment from your post, a large reason that these 'nerds' are unpopular are they way they defer to authority and suck up to the teacher. Even till now, I really dislike those people. Those nerds are conformist and learn exactly what they are told to learn. The cool kids are the ones that do things their own way. By virtue of that, they get to lead. If I were in a 2 seater plane that crashes on an island t…

I had a very smart, very nerdy friend in high school who wasn't cool. Whenever the French teacher handed out an assignment he thought was stupid, he simply refused to do it. No popular kid would have ever done that.

Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#68

Post by BrandonM »

jimbokun wrote: post #56
maxklein wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does your name not usually have an n in it? And is it not usually a girls name? I read your article to the end. This black culture looking down on intelligence thing is not new or insightful. I've read about that lots of time on the internet. Black culture does not look down on intelligence. It looks down on nerdiness. Let's imagine there is some really cool black guy - let's say the 50 cent of your high school. He d…

"He'd be monster cool, and still effortlessly ace all exams." Such people do not exist, given the "effortlessly" part. I think there is a consensus now that "talent" is mostly the end product of a lot of effort. Because outside observers do not see all of the hard work, only the end product, they infer that there must be some "talent" thing that explains why the other person can do things he cannot. I believe pg made…

Just for the record, I felt like I effortlessly did very well on most of my tests in high school. All I did was go to class, stay awake as much as possible, and do my homework. I never had to study in high school, where I was valedictorian, and I actually feel like my high school was pretty good. I did well on standardized tests (35 ACT, 1500 SAT), and felt at least as prepared as other freshman honors students at the Ohio State University.

Honestly, I'm not trying to brag here, but I do want to provide a counterpoint to your "consensus". I agree that many talents (musical, visual art, sports, etc.) require a lot of effort. Perhaps in the sense of general mental exercise, there is effort involved in being intelligent: I read a lot in high school, and I always find myself playing weird numbers games in my head (like adding up the digits of long numbers to see if it's divisible by 3 or 9). But as far as putting in a lot of effort to "ace all exams", I never really felt like I had to do that, and I highly doubt that I'm the only person like this.

Re: Why are Black Nerds so Unpopular?

#69

Post by BrandonM »

visitor4rmindia wrote: post #46

What I (personally) find very interesting in American schools is the "unpopular"=="picked-on" relation. I understand pg's argument that you have to work at being popular. In my (Indian) school, I was a typical nerd - I was poor, often wore uniforms from my previous years, I loved to read, and couldn't bother to spend the time socializing. There were a few others like me and a few widely popular, athletic, rich kids.…

I think it's a popular cliché in the media, mainly. I never saw it, personally, but beyond 4th grade my class size was less than 100, so my experience isn't exactly representative. In my school, the only ones who really got picked on were those with disabilities (unfortunately, but it was mostly in "good fun", like getting them to say funny stuff, etc., not ever anything violent).

I'm not trying to over-generalize my experience, but I think that in this day and age, nerds are not picked on nearly as much as you might be led to believe by popular media. Perhaps 20 or even 10 years ago that was true, and now those individuals are the same ones who are writing the same old nerd clichés into modern-day settings.

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