Race, Sex and Nerds: from Black Geeks to Asian-American Hipsters

By Dr. Ron Eglash

Link

A good essay about the intersection of racial / cultural stereotypes and the nerd subculture. It's a good read, and not too long. The author also hits on why I've always found Malcolm X so fascinating:

African American Exemplars

Let’s begin with the personal style invoked by Malcolm X. At first nothing seems more incongruous than associating a founding father of Black nationalism with pimple-faced computer geeks. But Malcolm’s horned-rimmed glasses and insistent intellectualism recall the earlier figure of the egghead – not quite a nerd, but only because he needed to challenge the class restrictions as much as the mental stereotypes (in other words, challenging Herbie Stempel would not be nearly as powerful as taking on Charles Van Doren). In the section of his autobiography covering his dramatic self-education in prison, Malcom repeatedly attributes all credit to Allah, his messenger Elijah Muhammad, and his struggle for black identity. Yet the most overtly egg-headed example in his autobiography is his passion for the debate over the identity of Shakespeare: “No color involved here; I just got intrigued over the Shakespearean dilemma” (p. 213)

While the Shakespeare example proves Malcolm’s cultural intellectualism, his persistent references to mathematics provide an kind of underlying nerd power: “I’ve often reflected upon such black veteran numbers men as West Indian Archie. If they had lived in another kind of society, their exceptional mathematical talents might have been better used” (p. 135). “When [Jackie Robinson] played… no game ended without my refiguring his average up through his last turn at bat” (p. 179). “Allah taught me mathematics” (quoting Elijah Muhammad, p. 237). “[The University of Islam] had adult classes which taught, among other things, mathematics” (p. 240). And in a television interview, his explanation for the new surname: “X stands for the unknown, as in mathematics.” By invoking the abstract rationality of math, Malcolm stood in shocking contrast to primitivist expectations of white America.