I am a proud blerd! What is a blerd you may ask? Well, the answer is "black nerd." Now I'm still a little new to some nerdy things, comics ain't cheap people, and I just got the Netflix to work so I'm catching up. But anyway, I am a blerd and I'm proud. Now being a blerd can be a little hard at time,s while you have a lot of People of Color (POC) characters to pick from and you don't have that many Black characters to really look up to for growing up. Hell it wasn't until 2009 that the first Black Disney Princess came out (She's also One of the Best, fight me if you think you know better), there aren't that many characters that are in action, sci-fi, fantasy media that we got to grow up with, they were all usually pushed to the side and just seen as the sidekick to the main character. Even if they are ten times cooler than the main hero. Ever heard of Moon Girl? Riri Williams? Misty Knight? Vixen? Those are just some kickass black females, and there are more.
But it isn't like with white heroes and having so many different choices to pick from (even with villains more choices). Now I'm not saying people just only like characters who look like them! I'm saying that it's sometimes nice for a kid to wake up one morning turning on the TV or opening a book and seeing a character that has their hair, skin tone even body shape. Why is it, when a character turns out to be a POC the world flips out, remember when Finn turned out to be played by John Boyega? Well, lot of people freaked out about it saying it was being up politically correct and that we were just reaching out to the SJWs to make them feel better. Well sad news for them Finn became a hero to the hearts of many young boys who's only Star Wars Hero was Lando Calrissian (Who in the young Han Solo Movie will be played by the Amazing Donald Glover).
And with hands down the best superhero movie ever Black Panther (fight me again if you dare to try) happening, young kids have so many new heroes to look up to that they may have never heard of because they get pushed to the back of the lineups because who knows why! I believe it's because of them being too sexy and they may kill the cupcakes of this world who don't know what a good looking body is, Idris Elba am I right people.
Now I don't want to write a thousand word essay, but I do have more to say, I'm going to do other parts, talking female characters, POC movies, whitewashing and other things that happen for geeky people of colors, I do hope that one day, going into film and writing that I can make young children not feel like they have no one to look to, but that they have a character that could the hero they pretended to be on the playground, for comic cons and any other time.
