Is the "Nerd" Stereotype Classist and Racist? (In a Word, "Yes")

The origins of the image of the "nerd" in American culture are hazy, with the etymology of the term and all associated with it substantially matters of speculation. Still, it has a certain undeniable charge. The concept seems undeniably anti-intellectual--and indeed it seems no coincidence that the term "nerd" was popularized in the thoroughly anti-intellectual atmosphere of the 1950s.

However, there are other charges as well, which can seem to reflect far older roots than that. Consider those two crucial nerd traits--the combination of intellectualism with social awkwardness. Looking back at early modern history one defining social conflict, amid this period in which the feudal nobility was declining, the bourgeoisie rising, and new career opportunities sought after by both groups in the emergent state apparatus, was the attitude of aristocrats who regarded themselves as entitled to preferment in civil service and military posts over "commoners" who were trying to get ahead in the race for such jobs on the basis of education, diligence, knowledge--such that one can picture the sneer of the nobleman at these bookish middle class types they regarded as lacking the graces by which the aristocrats defined themselves, and despising them for the book learning they did have. All of this, in fact, became quite serious at times--the clash over posts intensifying in France in the years before the revolution of 1789 (as seen in the regressive 1781 law that required an army officer candidate to have four generations of nobility behind him, shutting out not just the bourgeoisie, but recent nobility of the "robe" rather than the "sword" that had risen from the middle class).

One can also see something of such sentiment in later times, as with the idea of the "gentleman's C" at college. The whole idea of the gentleman's C was that it was beneath a gentleman--the son of wealth--to spend his time "grinding" away at his studies. That was for the ambitious, striving, lower orders, again looked down upon for their origin, and resented for their trying to get ahead rather than keep their place in the social hierarchy--the more in, again, as those who had been born privileged saw in them a threat to their own personal ambitions.

Alongside this upper class resentment of persons they saw as beneath them challenging their position on meritocratic grounds there is, too, what the fuller nerd image entails--and the other stereotypes it evokes. Consider the image of the nerd as not only intellectual and socially awkward, but unathletic, near-sighted, and perhaps also physically repellent in appearance and in other ways, perverse, "creepy." All of this corresponds to a package of stereotype historically associated with more than one ethnic group over the years--quite nastily. Indeed, it can seem that in this era where the bar for taking offense at perceived invocation of stereotype can seem so low that we do not hear more about this.

My guess is that for various reasons those preoccupied with the politics of status and identity have simply not found it convenient to take up this particular side of the matter.