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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Being a geek or a nerd where I grew up was a white thing ... for white people. Not even white MALES just white people. Black people weren't geeks. I never met one in my life ... not even in college ... not even after college. I didn't know there even were Black people that cared about geeky things or liked anime or read comics until social media became a thing and it was like a revelation opened up. By the time social media became I think I was a full grown adult ...
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I was almost 40 years old and needing to find "my people" was something I'd simply grown out of. But social media did show me that Black nerds exist and they are amazing and they experience much more worse things that I did growing up. Fandom these days is not only toxic AF it's dangerous and racist and misogynist and I would NEVER want to be a part of any club that has brutal conditions and gatekeeping and rules about who can and can't be in it ... kind of like the Black community.
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Fandom and the Black community share a lot of the same problematic aspects ... and it's sad because all it does is keep people fighting their own instead of the real problems and oppressors out there ... the people out there creating division, sowing hatred, separating the community while the real oppressors just sit back and laugh at everyone in the #GlobalMajority and call us fools and puppets while we dance to the tune of hatred that they taught us.
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I wish someone like Tony Weaver existed when I was a kid ... I wish his book existed ... I wish the Internet existed if only so I could know that other people like me existed in the world outside of my neighborhood and my school.
My world was so small ... and I felt like I was so alone in it most of the time. I could never have imagined there were people like me out there in the wider world. There was no wider world.
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I don't need Tony's book ... I wanted Tony's book. I wanted to support everything Tony does to make a difference in the lives of ALL nerds and geeks out there. We need more Tonys. We need more support. We need solidarity amongst each other.
The world is doomed otherwise.
I didn't have teachers who encouraged or uplifted me in my early school years. It wasn't until high school that any teacher made me feel recognized and encouraged me and it didn't even start that way.
This teacher held me back after class because I was reading in her class (I thought I was being stealthy about it 🤣). She said she didn't like students doing homework from other classes in her class. I wasn't doing anyone's homework (I rarely did homework at all), I was reading for pleasure.
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She pretty much accused me of lying because I was reading Beowulf and there was no way I was reading Beowulf for "fun". I reminded her that our high school English classes weren't EVER going to assign us reading like Beowulf and I didn't even get the book from our school library, I BOUGHT IT because our school was trash. She was intrigued by my answer and started quizzing me on it ... like a white boy talking to a girl about Star Wars.
If you didn't guess, the teacher was white.
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I only had one Black teacher ever in school and he was a music teacher I had in like 4th grade that got arrested years later for being a pedo ... so ... yeah. He was a good music teacher, that's what I remember but he was also creepy I remember that to.
Never had a Black teacher in high school. There was 1 but he taught the smart kids and I was in special ed classes. Never had a Black professor in my 80 million years of college either.
My time in public education was a burning dumpster fire.
Once I sufficiently proved that I was reading for fun after geeking out about like Bastian from The NeverEnding Story ... she said that she had a book recommendation after I finished the book and to let her know when I did.
That horrendously racistesque encounter led to me having an amazing relationship with this one teacher well into my college years. She recommended books for me and we'd talk about them ... like adults ... we'd talk about ACTUAL literature and she listened to my ideas.
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