More And More Black Kids Are Embracing Their Blerdiness…And It Might Save Us All.

When we were coming up, we were dissuaded from immersing ourselves in these works because “Black people did not do this stuff.” We were sold a false narrative which led us to believe these types of expression were reserved for white people. Like swimming, camping, and going to therapy, geeking was another thing Black people allegedly did not do.

It is mind-boggling when I see folks who used to tease me as a kid waiting in line for hours to cop the new Black Panther comic.

Right off the bat, I believe family should serve as a source of acceptance. If I am forced to masquerade around life for fear of judgement or the threat of violence, I deserve the freedom to be unapologetically myself around my fam.

Of course, everyone's biological family does not always live up to those expectations. Therefore, we have go out and create our own to find what we are missing. Let me tell you about someone in my adopted family. My spirit sister TQ is the realest. We vibe on the revolutionary tip and, like myself, she falls into the Blerd catergory.

*hits pause button* Let us stop right here for all who do not know what a Blerd is. Like our cousins, Bleeks, Blorks, and Bleirdos, Blerds celebrate the finer things in life… like watching Akira (RIP Makiko Futaki) and Sailor Moon on bootleg. We engage in the most scintillating of debates such as why Storm should have led the X-Men from jump and the myriad of ways the Black Panther can, has, and will always kick Captain America's ass. We are a proud people who remain vigilant for some fake-ass who saw one episode of Hunter X Hunter and then tries to lecture me about Chairman Netero.... I'm sorry, you caught me in a moment. I am going to stop now before I lose myself in this so let's get back to our regularly scheduled programming.

TQ posted this status the other day that encapsulated my Blerd life thus far:

"I remember in high school when kids would make you feel like a nerd or a weirdo for liking anime and playing Pokemon but now that I'm in college it's like if you don't watch anime you're not even living your life right (Insert three smiley faces). I'm surrounded by people who I'm confident to be myself around. Now I know why they say you meet your lifetime friends in college."

She ain't never lied.

Erika Peterman, writer and co-creator of the comics blog Girls-Gone-Geek.com, wrote about her experiences and the similarity between hers and TQ's was striking.

"Growing up, Peterman always knew and celebrated her nerd identity, yet it wasn't so easy to let her nerd flag fly in public. By pre-adolescence, I had internalized a lot of ideas about what it meant to be Black, from the music to listen to, to the people to hang out with, to the hobbies to practice. It didn't matter that the rules were bogus or perpetuated by people who were insecure about their own identities," said Peterman. "All I knew was that my unintentional eccentricity played a role in making me a target, and not in the general you're-a-dork way but the you're-a-dork-and-you're-too-white way."

When we were coming up, we were dissuaded from immersing ourselves in these works because 'Black people did not do this stuff.'

We were sold a false narrative which led us to believe these types of expression were reserved for white people. Like swimming, camping, and going to therapy, geeking was another thing Black people allegedly did not do.

For many of us, the road to being proud, loud, freaky, and geeky was a hard one to travel down. The soundtrack of my journey was provided by Prince & the New Power Generation and My Chemical Romance. I still get flashbacks about kids ripping up my Amazing Spider Man comic books in elementary school. In middle school, I used to hide in the bathroom and play Naruto Ninja Council on my Nintendo DS. I watched wrestling all through high school into college.

For most of my life, I engaged with these pleasures in complete and utter solitude.

Keeping that in mind, it is mind-boggling when I see folks who used to tease me as a kid wait in line for hours to cop the new Black Panther comic.

Let me preface by saying that I am overjoyed that y'all finally crossed over to the dark side. But y'all wasn't with us sitting in the corner. We remember.

But I am willing to let bygones be bygones. Plus, I'm not the arbiter of who is real and who is not.

The piece of this equation that I care about the most is the impact on Black kids. I am seeing Black girls with big afros going to comic conventions dressed as Tip Tucci from Home. Black boys rocking orange karate gis showing out as Krillin and Gotenks.

Do you want to know what the beautiful thing is? Their Blackness is not being called into question as it was when I was younger.

Now am I saying the policing of 'appropriate Black behavior' is entirely ameliorated? No. Am I saying that there is not anti-Blackness present within these works that we need to call out? Absolutely not. I am saying we cannot underestimate the significance of this culture shift and what it does to break down these rigid typecasts of what Blackness is and is not. Partaking in these forms of entertainment should not be viewed as antithetical to Blackness. To do so is incredibly invalidating and perpetuates this idea that there are guidelines one must meet to 'actually be Black.'

This shift gives me hope for the next generation. That hope is ALL our Black babies will do the work necessary to love, honor, and fight for ALL Black people so they ALL can bask in their Blackness and wave their freak flag too.