Clutch Magazine thinks Raafi is one of 12 Black Men to Watch. At the office, we’ve noticed him striking camera ready poses:)
Tag: Multicultural Markets
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Clutch Magazine: Black Nerds
dapper dan -
Black Nerds: a reprise
Editors Note: The below text is a follow-up to Raafi’s now-famous post about Black Nerds.
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Over the past couple months I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching over exactly what the word “nerd” actually means and found myself in a sort of Potter Stewart limbo. After all, blogging about what it means to be a nerd isn’t very cool, but I digress. My fragmentary notion that the black nerd is an emerging presence in our culture that is under-recognized has provoked many sorts of reactions from the vituperative (I see you Tai) to the laudatory. In the process the link has found its way into blogs at USA Today, MIT, and Ebony/Jet. The New York Times called to say wassup and just this week I appeared coast-to-coast on Canadian radio. Did I mention that Clutch Magazine thinks I’m a black man to watch? (I’ll mention here, in passing, that the Beastie Boys once recorded a song entitled “Hey Ladies!”). -
CBC: Black Nerds
on the remix well before it was hip
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation picked up on Raafi’s Black Nerds and interviewed him for Spark, their show about the intersection of technology and culture. -
Agency Spy: Black Nerds, Planning & Parties
the party password is…
Agency Spy has a crush on Desedo, talking about our work, our writing and our parties. We’re all blushy, but you know we like it. -
Islam, Bong Hits & Advertising '08
Brands and Ad Agencies have lately taken note of the $170 Billion purchasing power of Muslims in North America.Halal Chicken McNuggets for customers.
Ikea hijabs for employees.
Ramadan Sales for all?And as Madison Avenue develops campaigns for this newly acknowledged demographic, I’m curious to see if there will be nuance in the advertising. Or will it just be the Islamic equivalent of simplistic sombreros and soul claps – with every third word being “Allah”. Dunno. Still waiting to see a hijab in a national TV spot….one smart brand might start with this soccer player:
Chua_l9qNyI Thinking about this ‘new’ consumer base brought up hazy memories of Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. The brilliance of this film is that it was the first time a Hollywood pic featured an Indian-American and a Korean-American as “Red Blooded American Malesâ€Â. Like millions of other American men in the 18-34 demographic, Harold & Kumar’s prime objective was the holy trinity of Bong Hits, Bare Breasts + Burgers. Ever present were their races and cultures, but instead of being mined as tropes for pathos or the exotic, they were well employed as one of many narrative and comic elements.
CmSvLOLy0gY So what of this? Well many folks we know loved H&K as the FIRST bawdy blockbuster that spoke to their same-but-different status. What brand can do this? What agency can do this? I posit that there are still many millions of American consumers who have not yet seen a campaign that actually engages them with this intelligent duality. Does it matter? Even though we’re still stuck with many dated, even pernicious, cliches, our industry is not built to serve the common good, it’s about the bottom line.
So let’s frame it like this: Whichever brands can deftly tap into these markets, going beyond the easy sell, will see quite the windfall. And with the ever increasing number of platforms to reach the consumer, which can disseminate risk, I’ll wager we’ll see it soon.
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UPDATES & RELATED LINKS:10/7/07: Nigeria, Nokia & Ramadan
12/9/08: private/public lives and representational politics on TV
4/4/08: Holland is probably the Western country that has the highest % Muslim population. Read more about business and advertising at Islam in Europe.
4/18/08: Islam, Cosplay & comic books.
4/27/08: John Cho, Harold of White Castle, talks about choosing his roles
4/29/08: Oliver Wang talks about the social value of H&K 2 being mundane.
5/5/08 As The World Turns & Islam
September 2008 conference in Berlin about Islamic Consumer Culture. MHB was invited to submit an abstract for it…will keep ya posted.
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Linguistics and Codes of Cool
In the AICP show this year there were 3 award winning spots rooted in the idea of “White Kids acting Black”1) Adidas “3 Courts” – White kid puts on special sneakers and can hop across 3 courts better than all them jumpity black kids.
2) Smirnof “Tea Partay” – The viral sensation of Vineyard preps rapping and rumpshaking.
3) Star Trek “Cribs” – Animated Trek characters on the YoYoYo Turntable tip.
Well, BFD, we’ve been milking black culture for ‘cool’ since before Charlie Parker played a note. (metoo) But it is the couterpointing of this slam dunking/hip-hopping definition of Blackness that caused Raafi’s essay about Black Nerds to go viral.
From the traffic, I was directed toward the work of Mary Bucholtz, a scholar of Nerditry at UCSB. She writes that white nerds typically eschew their peers’ aforementioned adoption of black style and slang. Mary also dips into how “Hollywood has long traded in jokes that try to capitalize on the emotional dissonance of [white] nerds acting black (Eugene Levy saying, ‘You got me straight trippin’, boo’) and black people being nerds [aka ‘acting white’] – like Steve Urkel and Carlton Banks.” All food for thought. Gritty like wheatgrass. Do click on the above articles to read more.fb_LYmk8lrY —
douwantmore?
4/10/08: An article from San Jose about race, academia and cool. -
Black Nerds: The Revolution No One Could Have Predicted
On a late weekend night, two days before the release of the much-anticipated Microsoft video game Halo 3, a group of 8-to-10 black nerds in their late teens walks down the Bowery, their conversation animated. The leader of the pack, his Ben Wallace afro in full bloom, turns to the others, “Master Chief is… the Jack Bauer of… the Halo universe!” The pack, each member clamoring to respond in the affirmative before the others, turns into a burger joint.The rise of the black nerd has been a blustery and uneven process characterized by large gains and deep swoons. Presaged by Clarence Gilyard Jr.’s portrayal of Theo, the computer ace who hacks into the building vault in the classic film Die Hard, the nerd who is possessed wholly of a black American masculinity is a specific character that enjoys a renaissance today even as the hip-hop world continues to project a cartoonishly grotesque opposite. The broadening media landscape, however, allows us greater access to the pulse of black America even as the mainstream media seems to be
stuck on stupidinfatuated with the images of black males that (used to) sell records.
