Did other Black kids hate you because you were *smart* or because you were the type that walked around proclaiming that Black people hated you bc you were smart?

Blink and you’ll miss the sleight of hand: “smart” = “nerd culture,” which isn’t about “smarts” but certain *arguably* niche interests.

A lot of “blerd”/“acting white” lamentations rest on this very conflation.

This isn’t about waving away bullying — bullying is obviously terrible. OBVIOUSLY.

But again, there’s a reason that people don’t say “my peers clowned me for reading comics.” it renders the slights too mundane and unremarkable. There’s no dysfunctional pathology to overcome.

In that telling, they aren’t bravely flouting the anti-intellectual strictures of Black social spaces. They’re just kids who were dorky and had a really rough time.