The Pitch

In 2016, I introduced myself to a room full of tech investors as a certified “Blerd”—simply defined as a Black nerd. I was pitching my digital comic book platform, Peep Game Comix, as a way to connect Black pop culture fans to Black-owned publishers and their multi-cultural creations.

At the time, the term Blerd and the community it represented was a small yet burgeoning niche, and I was one of its most stalwart representatives. Fast forward ten years, and the community has grown by leaps and bounds. Black-themed pop culture events like the Schomburg’s Black Comics Festival attracted a modest 10,000 guests in 2016. Today, RDCWorld’s Dreamcon pulls in 30,000 guests annually. While I remain a card-carrying member of the Blerd community, it often feels as if this younger, more vibrant representation of the culture has left me behind.

On the Outside Looking In

I often lurk on the Dreamcon website with a twinge of jealousy as scores of young Blerds, dressed as their favorite anime characters, fill a Dallas arena. I find myself sympathizing with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when he told his followers he might not reach the Promised Land with them; I am viewing this euphoric moment from the proverbial mountaintop.

I’m not the only one feeling a sense of displacement. Several of my contemporaries—forebears of this movement—have become Blerd culture’s most vocal critics. We often find it disheartening to see a shift away from Black-owned narratives toward Japanese and white-owned mainstream IPs (Intellectual Properties). The transformation has been so overwhelming that I’ve questioned whether the original definition of “Black Nerd” even applies to this new landscape.

“It often feels as if this younger, more vibrant representation of Blerd culture has left me behind.”

Two Warring Ideals

Searching for a more current definition of today’s Blerd sub-culture, I encountered the work of Nikki Keating of Oberlin College. She asserts:

“I have identified the characteristics and culture that the Nerd community embodies. Nerds reject what is seen as ‘cool,’ choosing to indulge in unstylish or uncool things amongst their peers… By choosing to stray away from what is cool, nerds distance themselves from Black culture and identities, creating a strong correlation between Nerds and whiteness. Being a Blerd means placing yourself closer to whiteness… [yet] failing to completely immerse yourself in nerd culture as it fails to fully acknowledge or accept Black people’s identity. This conflict… pushed Blerds to create their own community as the middle ground.”

I may have aged out of this modern iteration of the culture, but I identify deeply with the struggle of not quite belonging to either traditional Black culture or so-called “white” culture. This definition resonates with me for two primary reasons. First, Keating’s description is strikingly reminiscent of W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of “double-consciousness.” In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois describes the internal turmoil Black Americans experience while reconciling their Blackness with their American-ness:

“One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

Modern Blerds are attempting to reconcile their “nerdiness” and their Blackness in a similar fashion. By merging these divergent worlds, they have created a neutral middle ground—what I call a “third space.”

Navigating the Third Space

This leads to the second reason Keating’s definition resonates: I was raised in a viable third space. As a high school honors student, I never quite fit in with the general Black student body, yet I didn’t fully identify with my white contemporaries in honors English. However, my parents were thoughtful enough to provide third spaces where I no longer had to choose. My mother was a member of Jack and Jill, Inc., a nationally recognized Black mother’s group which allowed me to socialize with other aspirational Black children. I also belonged to a multi-cultural scholarship program where I befriended Black and Brown scholars from across the city. These third spaces enabled me to reconcile my Blackness with my intellectual aspirations—a precursor to the expansive, celebratory third spaces that define today’s Blerd culture.

There is a painful irony in the critiques leveled by my contemporaries today. When we dismiss this new generation for their obsession with anime or their apparent distance from “traditional” Black-owned narratives, we are inadvertently echoing the same voices that haunted my high school hallways. Back then, I was told I “wasn’t Black enough” because I didn’t speak in Black English Vernacular or because I received A’s and B’s in honors classes. To those students, my intellectualism was a betrayal of the culture. Today, when we suggest that modern Blerd culture is “too close to whiteness,” we are performing that same gatekeeping—implying there is only one valid way to be Black.

“I wanted us to own the narratives, but these young Blerds have achieved something perhaps more radical: they have claimed the right to be their full, unreconciled selves without apology.”

The View from the Mountaintop

From the mountaintop, I feel a sense of vertigo in the pit of my stomach as today’s Blerd community turns everything askew through cultural intersectionality. The “twoness” Du Bois described is no longer a source of turmoil; it is now a source of celebration. Even my original idea of Black nerd culture seems passé. I wanted us to own the narratives, but these young Blerds have achieved something perhaps more radical: they have claimed the right to be their full, unreconciled selves without apology.

They aren’t “distancing” themselves from Blackness; they are expanding its boundaries so wide that no Black child will ever again have to hear that their grades or their interests make them “not Black enough.” I may be a guest in their world, but I’m happy to see that the war for the Black soul is over, and the Blerds have won.

References

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. A. C. McClurg & Co., 1903.

Keating, Nikki. “Student Research: How Does Being Black Shape Your Relationship with Being a Nerd?” Oberlin College and Conservatory, 2024, www.oberlin.edu/news/student-research-how-does-being-black-shape-your-relationship-being-nerd.

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