Growing up in the late 70s early 80s there were no Black nerds that I knew of. There was not Internet, there were no personal computers in everyone's home. There were no smart phones, not even portable ones. You only knew the people in your neighborhood and who you went to school with. If there were other people out in the world they may not have even existed. You learned about faraway places from actual encyclopedias.
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There were very few people in my neighborhood that were Black and the ones that were ... well ... they weren't nerds and they weren't geeks. Growing up in the 80s if you were a nerd or a geek you got beat up. You got bullied. If you played D&D you were accused of being in a satanic cult - if you think I'm joking look up the Satanic Panic in the 80s or watch the Tom Hanks movie Mazes and Monsters to see what people thought about D&D back then.
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There were no "safe spaces" except in the basements of your friends place like you see in Stranger Things ... everything was hidden ... every joy, every love, every secret RPG ..
The only friends I had who liked what I liked were white and they never made me feel not welcome back then the geek spaces were filled with ACTUAL GEEKS and they welcomed everyone. There was no "Girls Don't Like Star Wars" bullshit and woman hating and gatekeeping back then.
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@thewebrecluse I hear you.
My black friends outright told me they played D&D with me back then because there weren't enough black nerds to play D&D with. It would be maybe 1 or 2 people in a whole school or neighborhood and _EVERYone picked on them_. Relatives, teachers, neighbors, other "non-sissy" non-nerd kids.
If you were a nerd, you were also a sissy, of course!
Black nerdy kids (kay surpreez!) had/have it way rougher than white nerdy kids.
Many black nerds masked as something else.
@AskTheDevil I grew up in a very white upper middle class neighborhood ... the only Black upper middle class families were incredibly uppity and I didn't associate with them. I hung out with lower income white families who liked camping and whose kids listened to AC/DC because I felt more at home with them than I did anywhere else. I also hung out with tons of white male nerds who liked comic books and Piers Anthony books. No girls. Girls read Judy Blume and shit.
@thewebrecluse
(I read Judy Blume!)