Black Nerd Problems

by William Evans

  WILLIAM: Yeah, let’s get into what actually happened in Avengers #40 one time, before Namor got a bellyful of that Sleepytime tea. How dope was the passing back and forth of the King’s Blade? I appreciate Hickman sticking to the Chekhov’s gun theory where if you show a King’s Blade in the first act, you gotta jam it into a muthafucka and push him off a platform down to an exploding Earth in the third.

  OMAR: The play on the phrase that kept being repeated, “It’s a blade for a king.” I kept thinking as in possession, but in actuality it could be interpreted as a weapon for killing a king to crank that regicide.

  WILLIAM: Jaime Lannister, favorite son of Wakanda. Though Shuri don’t play that shit.

  OMAR: We never get to see it, but I wish we saw the scene with T’Challa explaining this plan to Black Bolt and Black Bolt agreeing. Black Bolt arrived with T’Challa as part of the game plan as well, so this had to be in play for dummmmb long.

  WILLIAM: Yooooooooo, when Black Bolt jumped on the track, that was Kendrick walking into the street on the “Nosetalgia” video with Pusha T. Black Bolt anchored the record like André 3000 circa 2013.

  OMAR: Black Bolt been waaiiiiiiitin’ to put Namor in his place. He hit him with the Mariah Carey, then looked at T’Challa like, “Hey, man, what you waiting on? WE GOTS TO GO!”

  WILLIAM: Black Bolt hit Namor with that Aretha and then bounced knowing Maximus was on that planet too. Or did he? Black Bolt was cool with merkin’ his brother? I dunno, I guess we don’t know what went down when the Cabal came in eight months ago and said, “Fuck yo couch,” but still. He just put his kin on the exploding Summer Jam screen.

  OMAR: We’ve seen murder happen throughout Marvel, but I can’t recall one where we seen a hero merkin’ another hero (both of whom are Avengers, no less). You know Steve Rogers gon’ say some American judicial-ass shit to T’Challa on this.

  WILLIAM: And T’Challa gonna tell Steve to kiss his kingly Black ass. Wakanda figured out how to disable guns years ago, you think T’Challa can’t figure out how to deactivate the nutrients in Rogers’s Metamucil? Sheeyet, Steve’s old ass better have a Coke, an EKG, and a smile, and shut the fuck up.

  OMAR: T’Challa is nowhere in the wrong for this. After all that was done to Wakanda, after T’Challa decided not to kill a whole other planet in order for our Earth-616 universe to survive, just to have Namor walk over, reset the router in order to blow Earth-4290001 the fuck up. Namor really said, “Fuck all your moral compass, monologues, and bystander-at-the-switch dilemmas, I got shit to do today.” T’Challa is in no way wrong for his actions in the least.

  WILLIAM: T’Challa just #PutTheBladeWhereItBelongs, fam. That’s it. If this were Florida and he was the White Tiger, this would be covered under Stand Your Ground laws. He had to do it, man, he had Biggie, Pac, Big L, J Dilla, and all the Panther gods telling him he needed to get this shit done.

  OMAR: Cornel West hit ’em up on the phone, said, “What you waitin’ on?” / Assata Shakur hit ’em up with a tweet, said, “What you waitin’ on?” / Chuck D send a text every hour on the dot sayin’ / “When you gon’ drop Namor, hero? You taking long.”

  WILLIAM: Yeah, man, feels so good for Black Panther to get back on this Murda Muzik. Don’t ever say Da Gawd don’t make good on his promises. T’Challa, first Avenger to catch a body in 2015. The leadership we need and deserve in the two-dime, dime-nickel.

  OMAR: This is an act in which T’Challa is letting Marvel Universe know what Namor figured out way too late, that: “You’re talking to the Vibranium-wearin’, African king–reppin’, limelight-stealin’, tech-dealin’, limousine-ridin’, jet-flyin’ son of a gun. And I’m having a hard time holding these Vibranium claws down.”

  NOW GIMME A BODY BAG AND A RIC FLAIR WOOOOOOOOOO!

  My Theory on How Black Folks’ Black Card Actually Works

  OMAR HOLMON, aka Capricorn with a Real Nigga Rising

  I’M WRITING THIS after having just finished watching The Wire and it feels like I just got done with a marathon. I’ve always joked about being the shame of my friends for not having known of it when it was big back in the early 2000s—what I never really analyzed, however, is that whenever I stated that I wasn’t aware of the show, my Black friends would joke about my Black Card being revoked or having it be up for renewal, which led me to a weird realization: Have you ever noticed how there is no breakdown for what defines the Black Card?

  I’m talking about how it works, what truly makes up the mechanics of the card itself… There is no pie chart whatsoever. The Black Card is referred to in passing among us as this totem that each Black person acquires at birth. Unless you’re biracial, in which case some might (incorrectly) say that you have to earn it. Listen, this isn’t a wolf ticket I’m buying or selling, because that’s just segregation among each other. A lighter complexion doesn’t mean you need to get put on a waiting list, because that one-drop rule was made just for the occasion of keeping passing folk out. Trust that discrimination will find your ass REGARDLESS. Being biracial doesn’t stop you from claiming that Black Card as your birthright.

  Fact is, that’s mostly what we know of the Black Card, isn’t it? That it’s our birthright, right? And in order to maintain it the rules state that one must keep it real, one hunned, and Black. Now the question comes in “keeping it real”: Does it mean to yourself, your culture, or both simultaneously? Do the needs of Black culture outweigh the deed to who you are? And how does this all get measured on your Black Card? That’s the tricky part. For example, grits are Black as fuck, right? That’s a given. Blackest night of my life was eating catfish and grits in Harlem while listening to Tupac’s “Ambitionz az a Ridah” playin’ in the background. Personally, I don’t like grits, but my sister fucking LOVES ’em (she is Black and Indian). Does that take away from my Blackness? Does her Blackness outweigh mine? Does me knowing the vernacular for and the location of “the kitchen” redeem my Black Card for a stamp of approval?

  Now how about the side of the Black Card where the needs of the culture outweigh your own? It isn’t until recent years that I realized the time spent with my father was him raising me as a Black militant-as-fuck person from day one. We weren’t talking basketball, soul music, or movies. Every single second of my time spent with that man was filled with Black history, not just in America—I’m talking worldwide. In hindsight it seems that to my father this excessive amount of knowledge and culture outweighed everything else. My father wanted his child, his Black child, to know these facts about the Black people and culture that we stemmed from. Possessing this knowledge of Black culture and history was worth more than my need for what I thought father-son bonding looked like.

  See, some envision the Black Card as a punch card where unlocking certain things (for example, knowing the location of “the kitchen” or the lyrics to a song in The Wiz) earns a stamp of approval on the card. I never saw it as that. To me, it’s this badge that you’re given, right? The Black Card is always with you and materializes whenever you level up. It informs you of your clearance grade. To me, nothing is ever deducted from you (because the world does that for us daily), but you can only level up with experience points. And the knowledge that acts as your experience and is used to level you up isn’t up for scrutiny, because I may not gain the experience points of having seen the show Oz, but I know who Imhotep is, that he is regarded as the father of medicine, a poet, and a polymath, and I can quote him. Does not viewing Oz (fiction) outweigh that knowledge (nonfiction)?

  The way I view the Black Card’s experience system is like a video game: if you didn’t complete the Oz TV series viewing mission, then you don’t get the experience points that Oz provides or have Oz as an unlocked achievement. Simple, right? It gets more complex when you identify with subcultures. For instance, I identify as a nerd. There is no Nerd Card per se, but in this subculture, you have to prove how much of a nerd you are as a way of flexing your authenticity because someone will test you.

  To be a Black nerd is to be in a
subculture within a subculture. It’s ironic, as diversity has been scarce creator-wise and character-wise for the longest time within certain realms of nerddom, yet to prove I am a nerd, I must be extremely versed in my field of expertise (comic books), the majority of which for the longest time were created by and marketed for cisgender white males. But I gotta be knowledgeable on Star Wars (which had like five Black people in the galaxy [insert clone troopers argument here], but whatever) or Star Trek in order to prove my nerd cred (I ain’t even ’bout that space adventure life like that), even though growing up this was seen as a conflict of interest with my Black Card. Why? Well, as Donald Glover said about being a Black nerd in his Weirdo stand-up special, “That shit was illegal until like 2003.” Which is to say, these portions of pop culture weren’t associated with having Black fans.

  My “nerd cred” is always going to have to be a skill tree set attached to my Black Card. They can’t be separated. I made a nerd clutch his pearls when I told him I never saw Tron. He said, “Are you serious? You gotta see Tron!” I said, “Man, the fuck I look like watching Tron on VHS in 2015, bruh? Fuck Tron, there weren’t any digital Black people or people of color up in that watered-down Ghost in the Shell–ass game. You know what nerd shit from the ’80s I was fucking with comin’ up? The Last Dragon. Oh, you never heard of it? I’M NOT SURPRISED. Knew your ass ain’t got the glow.” You gon’ try and run my nerd cred, you best select what Game Over title you want as the backdrop at your funeral, ’cause NOT ON MY WATCH.

  I’m more prone to get defensive when anyone wants to discredit my nerd. “You’re not a nerd” is a slap in the face, because you don’t know the shit I been through repping this subculture in the streets before this shit became chic and cool, muhfucka. I earned these stripes. Now when another Black person says, “I’ma have to check your Black Card,” or threatens that you’ll have it revoked, it’s all in jest, a way of saying that you’ve been caught slipping on something you should be hip to because Black culture has embraced and cosigned it. Obviously there are some that may mean that statement maliciously, I don’t gloss over that or pretend it doesn’t occur. I can recall numerous occasions when I was younger and mentioned how I didn’t own Jordans or follow basketball and a white kid commenting, “You’re not really Black,” as if they were the authority on the matter, which they honestly have no right to say, especially when they’re a stranger or a friend of a friend. The initial instinct when this occurs, with me, at least, has always been, “And who the fuck are you to tell me about being Black?” It’d be at this point they’d say they were just kidding, but it’d be too late because I wasn’t, so now this conversation about why they felt comfortable enough to say such a thing to me but not expect a response. Perhaps it’s a mark of being the “safe” Black guy and not dangerous or tough. Odds are if you are Black and come off as nerdy in a way that some white folk perceive as unconventional for Black people, then you have heard the “you’re not Black” critique or the ever inescapable “I’m Blacker than you are.”

  I was in South Africa visiting my then girlfriend and had a white dude say to me, as a joke because I’m American, “I’m more African than you are.” Now obviously it was said in jest, but the bite was still the same because what do we say about the relationship between the truth and jest? Y’all know it. The most frustrating part was that I’m literally in one of the fifty-four sovereign countries located on the continent I’ve been told to go back to a number of times in my life, and even here I’m “not Black enough.” Of course I could’ve pointed out that being a citizen of South Africa via colonization (vintage gentrification) is way different than being African/Black and torn from your home, but you gotta pick your battles, so fuck me, right? (Plus I looked up and saw Mufasa telling me, “I know. I know… Just let this one go.”)

  I’ll charge that shit to the Black Card ’cause ignorant comments (real life or online) MUST count as experience points. I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t fucking care. As far as I’m concerned, when Black folk start growing gray hair, that’s not age catching up or even stress, that’s you physically leveling the fuck up from having to deal with systemic oppression’s fuck shit on the regular. I had to listen to a dude who was darker than me explain why he rides for All Lives Matter, the reasoning being that no life is more important than the other and all lives are equal, but HE THEN STATES FOUR SENTENCES LATER IN REGARDS TO POLICE RACIAL PROFILING: “Come on, I’m Blacker than you [Note: He meant complexion-wise]. I know it can happen to me.”

  Son, by the time I was done explaining how the too is implied in Black Lives Matter (too) and walked out of that conversation, I had enough experience points to reach a level that I shouldn’t be able to get to till I’m damn near in my fifties AT LEAST. The Black Card isn’t a ranking system for how Black you are and will become. No, more than anything it’s a fucking gauge for all the shit you’ve been through, will go through, and have yet to go through in the world.

  I semi–used to think there was a +999 cap on the Black Card, that there was some final level where you reach Morgan Freeman–level clearance and then Iram of the Pillars rises from the depths before you, you enter another dimension, and you walk through elaborate halls where eons of Black history, African culture, and scriptures not forgotten but hidden away from the world thrive only for those who have reached the final stage of Blackness, then the ghosts of Toussaint Louverture, Henrietta Lacks, Audre Lorde, and Uncle Phil appear before you as a figure in the distance walks down a spiral staircase in the shadows while slow clapping then steps forward into the light, revealing himself to be none other than Samuel L. Jackson, and he says, “Congratulations, motherfucker, you’ve reached the ultimate stage of Blackness… peak muhfucking Blackness.” Peak Blackness knows no final form.

  Top Five Dead or Alive: Tai Lung (Kung Fu Panda)

  WILLIAM EVANS, aka Jim Kelly as an Anthropomorphic Fox

  FIRST THINGS FIRST, if you don’t fuck with kung fu, pandas, or Kung Fu Panda, then you chose the wrong book aisle after dark, homie. Speaking ill of any of those things will get you reenacting Ricky’s last moments in Boyz n the Hood. You can’t swing a Pixar employee without hitting a new animated film with talking animals/creatures with top-notch celebrity voice talent, but across all animated studios, Kung Fu Panda is still upper echelon, fam. Especially when the Minions got their own film and every year on this Earth promises the potential of another Ice Age sequel or spin-off. And if we talkin’ Kung Fu Panda, we talkin’ about some against-all-odds, martial arts deliciousness. Here’s the quick and dirty on the plot:

  Po is a number one fanboy of the Furious Five, five handpicked martial arts experts from the animal kingdom training in perpetuity just up the block from his pop’s noodle shop. On the day that wise Master Oogway, aka Turtle Shell Yoda, is to pick the next Dragon Warrior, the assumption is that one of the five will be chosen. But when Po tries to get that backstage pass to see who will get chosen, his shenanigans lead Oogway to picking him as the Dragon Warrior instead. Your boy ain’t kunged a fu in his life. But now he has a destiny to fulfill. Shifu, the master that has personally trained the Furious Five, is, well, furious. But you know how this works. Po has heart, and in animated films heart has like an 80x skill multiplier. He convinces his naysayers and saves the village.

  “Save from whom?” you may ask. Well, that’s why the fuck we came here in the first place. We talkin’ villains, yo. Nothing beats the original. Tai Lung was the truth. Ever see the anime Fullmetal Alchemist? Where the protagonist Elric brothers do some taboo shit they had no business doing that cost them body parts and shit? It was the cost for seeing “The Truth.” That’s the kind of Truth we talkin’ about with Tai Lung. As the greatest snow leopard of all time, for Kung Fu Panda, you gotta put Tai Lung in the Top Five Dead or Alive.

  But if they ever flip sides like Anakin

  You’ll sell everything includin’ the mannequin

  They got a new *%&^, now you Jennifer Aniston

  �
�Kanye West, “Gone”

  Yo, you know how this dark prophecy shit works. Cat’s (literally cat, since dude is a snow leopard) just out here surviving as an orphan, trying to find his place in the world, and also happens to be a once-in-a-lifetime type of talent. Tai Lung was the prodigy but was denied his legacy cuz Oogway saw darkness in him. So yeah, homie was mad he done worked his whole life to be told that some unseen thing made him unworthy. You ever work your whole life for a job you’re immensely qualified for, just for the CEO to be like, “Nah,” when you up for promotion? I mean, if you’re a person of color, I might already know your answer. But you might have the impulse to fuck up the Jade Palace.

  But you aren’t a master of Leopard Style, so you didn’t. Tai Lung was and went into straight “who gon’ check me, boo?” mode. Well, Oogway checked him, to answer that last question. Oogway was THE master and he brought Tai Lung down with like a pressure point strike. That shit happened so quick his fitness tracker didn’t even pick up the exercise. But that’s beside the point. The Rap Game was Dragon Warrior, and Tai Lung still had the hottest mixtape in the street. Maybe we need to look at Shifu and his shoddy leadership. Dude practically raised Tai Lung, but I guess we on some nature vs. nurture shit, huh? Fuck that, free Tai Lung.

  I swam down shit’s creek and came up clean

  With a new lease on life like Andy Dufresne

  —Jay Electronica, “Exhibit A”

  Actually, fuck that. Tai Lung gonna free himself. Look, maybe you think it was right to deny Tai Lung his destiny, and maybe you somehow stayed after the intro while not being a huge Kung Fu Panda fan. But what I will not take any argument on is that Tai Lung’s prison escape from Chor-Ghom is the greatest prison escape of all time. I said that shit and won’t take it back. Don’t @ me.