Essay about being a NOC (Nerds of Colour).

Some of my favourite bits:

But then 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.

However, there was a discomfort about some of my own internalized issues.  I always chose to ignore the weird feeling I got when I realized that, in my dreams, I was always, literally, a white knight.  When I dreamt I was a superhero, I was a white dude with superpowers and the Mary Jane to my Peter Parker was always white

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.  Bring up issues of representation and race to fans of Battlestar and Firefly and get told that you’re a killjoy or one of the “PC police” who doesn’t understand what their favorite show is trying to do.

origionally found here. Its good to see essays like this turning up on the internet especially in more mainstream places like Io9.

Tags: Battlestar Gallactica, class, class warfare, comics, criticism, Firefly, geek, gender, homophobia, Nerd, Nerd of Colour, race, racism, Sci-fi, science fiction, sexism

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