“Damn, Do Any of You Guys Ever Get Any Sun?”: Hyperwhiteness and White Guilt at LAN Parties

Bryan-Mitchell Young

Whiteness at IU and Indiana

74%

26%

Indiana University Race

WhiteNon-White

84%

16%

State of Indiana

WhiteNon-White

“the sense that whiteness is nothing in particular, that white culture and identity have, as it were, no content” – page 9

whiteness is an “unmarked category against which difference is constructed” which means “whiteness never has to speak its name, never has to acknowledge its role as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations” – Page 1

• Like Dyer I am using “white” and “non-white” because there isn’t anything better

– “people of color” “reiterates the notion that some people have colour and others, whites, do not”

– “black” leaves out those “who are neither white nor black” (Dyer 11).

“all whites do not benefit from the possessive investment in whiteness in precisely the same ways” (Lipsitz 22).

categories such as “white trash,” “hillbilly,” or “redneck” are and deviant categories of whiteness because they do not live up to the level of whiteness that is seen as acceptable or normal (Hardigan qtd in Bucholtz 84).

In “The Whiteness of Nerds: Superstandard English and Racial Markedness,” Mary Bucholtz argues that not only are there “inferior” kinds of whiteness but there are also forms of whiteness that make themselves visible not because they “transgress[s] racial boundaries but” because they “maintai[n] such boundaries too assiduously—that is, [they are] ‘too white’” (84).

Why nerds are “hyperwhite”• Bucholtz argues nerds are “too white”

because:–they “refus[e] to strive for coolness”

• She argues white forms of “coolness” –“requires the appropriation of […] black

styles that are becoming deracialized”–Because these styles are “deracialized”

nerds are not rejecting blackness but rather “trendy whiteness.”

I disagree…• My nerds don’t seem to reject coolness or

“deracialized black styles.”• Most wear the same clothes, use the same slang

and listen to the same music as most of the non-gamers at IU listen to– Of course this doesn’t mean that they don’t also wear,

use, and listen to videogame-centric things that mainstream college students do not.

So what makes them “nerds” and what makes them “hyper-white?”

• Their interactions with computers– Not just users– Masters and builders

race and technology • Much technology is masculine– Made by men, for men

• Similarly much technology is white– Made by whites, for whites

“Again it is a world of men [….] you had to be tough and fast; members of the group often talked of doing things 'quick and dirty', and of 'wars', 'shoot-outs', 'hired guns', and people who 'shot from the hip'. [….] It is surely no coincidence that the protagonists of the story are almost exclusively male.” (141)

But not only are they men…

“technology is more than a set of physical objects or artefacts. It also fundamentally embodies a culture or set of social relations made up of certain sorts of knowledge, beliefs, desires and practices” (Wajcman 149).

PC Gamer

That was then, this is now…

• Computers may have been created by whites• Today in the USA computer use is common by

individuals of all races and ethnicities.

• But…• Gamers aren’t just users. They are builders of

computers.

“that is a white thing because there’s no way a bunch of black guys are going to sit around getting smelly and not take a shower.”