What do Neil deGrasse Tyson, President Barack Obama, forever First Lady Michelle Obama, and Chance the Rapper have in common? They were all, back in the day, considered n-words:
Nerds.
Now, each has reached the highest heights in their respective fields and wields influence over a global society, including those folk who in the past may have called them out of their names.
I’ll never forget when the movie “Revenge of the Nerds” came out back in 1984. The first person I thought of was my homebody and running buddy from middle and high school, Mike Meade.
We were both nerds to the Nth degree (not even my very active participation in sports, namely football and baseball, could mask my nerdness), but I gave him extra grief because he played in the band. Now, did I think “band geeks” were really nerds? Not at all. I’ve always had mad respect for folk so musically inclined that they possessed the talent, intelligence, and cool to master an instrument. However, both of us knew that society viewed band members as nerds, and so I called Mike out on his supreme nerd-dom religiously.
It was all in fun, no venomous intent included. And Mike knew it. Hell, I was a bigger nerd than him. But me, the nerd, teasing Mike about his band membership as iron-clad proof of his nerd superiority, was a running joke between homies.
So, when the movie “Revenge of the Nerds” came out, I knew me and my dude had to see it together.
So, there we were, now both college freshmen, sitting in the theater watching this movie. And then the scene of all scenes shown on the big screen.
If you’ve seen the movie you already know that near the end, as the “jocks” are doing everything possible to humiliate the nerds who have formed a college frat, during the homecoming football game, one of the head nerds, Lewis Skolnick, delivers the famous nerd “call-to-action” speech.
“We have news for the beautiful people. There’s a lot more of us than there are of you. I know there’s alumni here tonight. When you went to Adams (College) you might’ve been called a spazz, or a dork, or a geek. Any of you that have ever felt stepped on, left out, picked on, put down, whether you think you’re a nerd or not, why don’t you just come down here and join us, okay. C’mon!”
And in the movie, slowly, individuals in the stands who identify as nerds start walking down onto the field. And then more and more join them. And then the ENTIRE BAND walks down onto the field.
I was dying laughing. And Mike was too!
But I also felt that nerd call personally because I was, and still am, a nerd.
But I’ve seen with my own eyes and my own personal life experiences that nerds have done, are doing, and will continue to do some of the coolest things on the planet.
Take my nerd compadre Mike Meade, for example. He proudly let his nerd-dom express itself in an early career as a videographer and cinematographer. But that was just his opening act. Mike is a freakin’ world-class musician who has done his thing on the international stage for decades now.
And I don’t even need to review the resumes of Tyson, Chance, and the Obamas.
For far too long, children, sometimes at the egging on of parents, have labeled whole groups of our people as nerds because some actually liked school or weren’t feeling sports, so they applied their interests in other areas. Some of these nerds were made fun of and even bullied. Others were silently “tolerated.” Others gained some level of peer acceptance and/or notoriety, but were still viewed as “different.”
Well, if being a nerd means that you like reading, excelling in the classroom, playing an instrument, using your hands to work magic in any number of areas (carpentry, auto repair, farming, gardening, art, etc.), or taking up hobbies that are considered outside the Black “norm,” then we need to start pushing our children to aspire to be the biggest nerds on the planet. And if being different means being your true, authentic self, regardless of what others think, that looks like courage to me – like someone who can grow up and successfully take on the world and all its slings and arrows, and still stay true to themselves and their purpose.
We’ll all be better as a people when we start encouraging one another to let our nerd flags fly. Or as Lewis’s “Revenge of the Nerds” running buddy Gilbert Lowell put it in that final scene, “No one’s gonna really be free until nerd persecution ends.”
