To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to understand at a young age that people who look like you are rarely ever the hero.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to cringe as your culture is misrepresented in a half hearted attempt to showcase diversity as the voice actors, artists, and writers don’t know your culture.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to accept the fact that because a majority of fictional villains and thugs look like you, others will build preconceived notions of you in the real world.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to figure out how to cosplay your favorite characters that don’t have your hair, skin, and figure.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to build a thick skin as racial slurs flood your headset in online games if they figure out what you look like.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to be the token minority friend while dealing with light racism for the sake of friendship with people of similar interests.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to be at peace with the fact that the best you can hope for is a sidekick with a couple one liners and maybe a solid attack from a character with your skin tone.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to praise bad movies solely because they are one of a handful that represents you and your culture that everyone else cannot stand.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to understand that people like your women, your slang, your culture, and your food but don’t care about equal representation.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to be expected to cosplay as certain characters solely because they share your skin tone when you actually would want to cosplay another character.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to navigate the rough water of dating outside of your race since typically Caucasians understand and enjoy your same interests but have to deal with culture clash.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to feel the eyes of security and vendors fall upon you more so than others at conventions.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to grin and bear it when your peers utter phrases such as: “I am not racist but I would never date a [Enter race here].” When in reality they judged someone based upon the color of their skin rather than the content of their character, which means, they are racist.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to get with other minorities and exchange favorite horror stories of racism.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to understand that you and another can produce the same quality of content but because of your skin tone, the amount of support and attention is halved.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to choke on your drink as you prepare to explain to someone why ‘Black face’ in cosplay or ever is 100% wrong.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to sit there and be told that you are ‘over reacting’ to how different the experience is to be a Minority and to be a Geek.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to one day come to terms with the fact that you are beautiful, strong, unique, and wonderful.

To Be a Minority and to Be a Geek is to have the extra responsibility in teaching the next generation of minorities and geeks that it is going to be okay. Things do get better and the community will grow to understand and accept you. Progress might be slow but we can not ever low our roll or lose the swagger in our step.