are you a NOC?

NOC stands for Nerd of Color–and if you answered yes to that question (or even if you didn’t), I hope you’ll read this interesting article by Bao Phi (thanks to Claire for posting it on CBS).  Yesterday as I lay on the couch coming out of my post-migraine fog, I found myself hoping that Lord of the Rings was somehow available online.  I needed a Frodo fix, and some days it’s just like that…

What I’ve written less about is the books I gravitated towards: books about mythological monsters, Greek gods and heroes, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Lord of the Rings, my older sister’s Elfquest collection and X-men comic books.  And the secret of many a nerd of color from the ‘hood: my lifelong devotion with role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, and Vampire: the Masquerade (making vampire fixations embarrassing long before Stephanie Meyer).

Although I had friends in and out of the neighborhood who were also nerds, it definitely wasn’t typical…

…how do nerds of color like me fit in, and how do we deal with fellow nerds who don’t want to talk about things like race and class in comic books, video games, role playing games, and movies?   I’ll be the first to admit, I got into all of that stuff for the escapism it allowed.  It was invaluable to me, as a refugee from a war growing up in an economically poor urban area, to fantasize that I was someone else, somewhere else…

And you’d think that fellow nerds, regardless of race and gender, would understand given that our status as freaks and geeks and outcasts would give us some humility and common ground to stand on.  Unfortunately, this is not often the case.  Try bringing up issues of race, class, gender, and homophobia on a video game message board and see the vitriolic response you get, no matter how diplomatic you try to be…And being a nerd as well as a person of color, I understand being defensive.  You always feel like someone is going to make fun of something you hold sacred.  But at what point do you learn from that experience, of being the odd one out, and realize that you may be doing that to someone else – based on their race, or gender, or with whom they decide to partner with?