Around the web 8/1/07

Check out Umm Zaid’s Muslim.America

Converts by the numbers

The whiteness of being a nerd

In a 2001 paper,

No Responses to “Around the web 8/1/07”

  1. I wish they would have research how many converts come from the penal system.

  2. “On the other hand, the code of conspicuous intellectualism in the nerd cliques Bucholtz observed may shut out

  3. Carlito, surely a lot of the women who converted didn’t come from the penal system. What is the breakdown on the gender of converts?

    Yeah the nerd article hit close to home for me too. I’m in a graduate program at a prestigious research institution. Funny how the socially awkward can make a person of color feel really excluded. Who says they recounced white privilege? They run the sciences, and even the humanities, both are hyper white.

    Even though many of the students I have studied with and taught have one or both parents who have degrees and even advanced degrees, significant portion of AA students are first generation college students. One of the things that educated African Americans learn is how to put on different masks in different social environments. It’s called code switching. In truth, most AA student have more social skills and can operate in different social and class environments. That is because we have to. But in the academy it can really work against you. You’re supposed to be unattractive, unstylish, have poor hygeine and terribly awkward social skills in order to be really smart. Otherwise, your peers often assume you are not as smart them. That’s the problem that I have with sub-cultures. While they do not conform to the dominant norms, they still impose so much conformity in their sub groups.

  4. Yup, close to home here too
    talk about a black sheep,

    About to enter a graduate program, whereas most of the childhood friends barely if at all got out of high school. Had to bite my tongue a lot around them, watered myself down.

    Too athletic to be a nerd.
    Too academic to be a jock

    When with my hood friends, hid my intelligence, however, when with the socially challenge friends, yea ok I mean nerd friends, I had no problem showing how hood I was.

    Constant

  5. If a butler can make six figures leaving aside perks, why bother going to university?

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