You probably noticed that my cute Blerd Vision bug has Raj from
What's Happening!! in it.
FOG! editor-in-chief Stefan picked it out for me, but first he had a few options: Raj, Urkel and Carlton.
He prefaced the Urkel and Carlton picks with saying he didn't really like using them because, well, they seemed too obvious.
And, boy howdy, was he right. I'm 30. As a black nerd coming of age in the 1980s and '90s, those two names were used more often in bullying than any other epithet hurled at me – even more than
nerd. In my kid-world,
nerd was the N-word. And Carlton and Urkel represented the depths of black nerdiness.
At least on
The Cosby Show, the Huxtables' supreme nerd powers were tempered with all kinds of quintessential hallmarks of the black middle class: style, jazz, sports, fashion, fancy degrees, money and old-fashioned accomplishment. But Theo and Sondra gave way to Urkel and Carlton.
And oh, how easy it was to call me Urkel, since I was a chubby black kid with straight A's and glasses. And those pre-1995 glasses, too, with the giant lenses and tortoise-shell colors. Before
Family Matters introduced the world to “Did I do that?” I only got
nerd before. Hell, the glasses and grades got me another nickname, too: The Professor. I
liked that one.
But no, I was Urkel now. From kids it was derisive, but from adults it sounded almost respectful. I took commuter trains to attend my high school in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and this guy in his 30s and his working pals would often take the same train back to Philly as I did. He called me Urkel all the time, but he always asked me how school was going to and keep it up.
So Urkel, while grating, didn't sting too much. Urkel was just broad cartoon nerd in a cookie-cutter sitcom – big glasses, highwater pants and suspenders with a heavy dose of social awkwardness, snorty laughter, cheese-eating and polka. I liked
Family Matters. (Side note: Remember that “special episode” where Urkel taught everyone how to
"Do The Urkel" dance, got
drunk on spiked punch, then had to be helped down from a ledge by a tightrope-walking Telma Hopkins? Ah, special episodes.)
But Carlton? No no no. People called me Urkel, it didn't sting too much. I knew I wasn't like that. But the Carlton comments got to me. See, Carlton Banks had the brains, but it was wrapped up in this preppy, adult-contemporary, killjoy sensibility that not only called into question his coolness, but his very racial identity.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air frequently made jokes based on the premise that somehow Carlton's nerdiness, perfect diction and love of Tom Jones made him not authentically black, especially up against Will's street cool. It even filtered down to how they danced; Will had all his cool B-boy moves, and Carlton had that
jerky, snap-fingered bop.
Carlton cut too close. I “talked white” according to ignorant folks both white and black; liked my occasional adult-contemporary tune; had Ivy League dreams; and my taller brother had the street cool I lacked. (But I'm no Republican.) And just like Carlton, my blackness was called into question because of my nerdiness. A “sellout” who thinks his money
protects him from discrimination. Gimme a break.
But every once in a while, Carlton would get to stand up for himself – most notably when he told the black fraternity brother who was hating on him that “
black isn't something I'm trying to be, it's what I am.”
An old Harvard professor of mine, Henry Louis Gates Jr., probably
said it best: “There are 35 million black people in this country and there are 35 million ways to be black.” And so that's what I think, no matter what. I'll take my comic books, theater and punk rock, and be happy.
I loved Urkel and Carlton for what they were as pop-culture reflections of my life, and hated them for how they were used against me. That no matter what laughs they drew, they remained themselves.
And now I wonder, where do the little blerds now find their place in pop culture? Aside from the Tyler Perry-Ice Cube zone of TBS, there aren't any more sitcoms with majority black casts.
It's better than you think, if you know where to look. In the age of Internet, social media and Wikipedia, nerds are pop-culture cool.
Blerds are rappers now, from Lil' Wayne to Lupe Fiasco. And Kanye West? Biggest blerd in music today; look at how wrapped up he is in avant-garde art, fashion, film and music, spending half his days on Twitter and Tumblr, and that whole year he
dressed like Pee Wee Herman with a mullet.
TV's new resident blerd, Donald Glover on
Community, raps under the name Childish Gambino. Some of the athletes are blerds, too; hello,
Von Miller, LeBron James and Tiger Woods, who got slapped with the Urkel tag himself as a
math major at Stanford.
And King Blerd of them all? He's only president of the United States. And he kills terrorists and pirates.
Nerds – and blerds like me – are everywhere. Urkel's got a Tumblr, and Carlton is sitting at New Jersey Nets games with Jay-Z.
