Nerdology 101: Juneteenth

Hey, hey! Welcome back to Nerdology 101. This week, we’ll be focused on Juneteenth.

What’s Junteenth?

Juneteenth is a celebration about the freedom of Black people. Following the Emancipation Proclimation, which was made effective in 1863, many enslaved people were not freed. It wasn’t until June 19, 1865, two years after, when Union soldiers (remember that Union soldiers weren’t all white. You should not be interpreting this as a bunch of white people “rescuing” Black people) arrived in Gavelston Bay, TX, that the 250,000 Black people still enslaved in Texas were freed. We call the anniversary of that day Juneteenth. It is a national holiday, but tends to go without as much recognition as many others. You can learn more about it HERE.

Oh, that’s cool. It sounds like a great reason to celebrate.

It should be, but celebrating freedom can be a bit hard for Black people given the context of the moment we're living in. Many likely find themselves wondering if they’re free at all.

What context?

Already this June, we’ve seen two horrific situations unfold in a way that deeply impacts the Black community.

Karmelo Anthony

First, we’ll speak about the case of Karmelo Anthony, a 19-year-old sentenced to 35 years in prison for stabbing someone. For context, both Anthony and the person he stabbed were 17 at the time of the conflict and this happened on school grounds at a track meet. THIS article documents the court trial. Anthony didn’t deny that he stabbed Austin, rather his defense argued that he did so in self-defense. Meanwhile, the prosecution said it was an “unjustified, provoked murder.” In this trial, the jury had the option to lessen the charge to manslaughter too.

Here’s where the problem comes in, though. Anthony’s defense makes some good points. First, the knife Anthony had was like a 6-in-1 tool knife. If you’re premeditating a stabbing, that’s not the knife you grab. Second, Anthony was under the tent first, meeting with a friend he spotted there. Second, it’s clear there was physical conflict prior to the knife being used. The prosecutions own video analyst said it looked like someone was pushed (though who was pushed isn’t a question we can answer). So, what we know from that is that Anthony was in a physical altercation, which is typically when one would feel the need to defend themselves. It was during this physical conflict that Anthony stabbed Austin one time. After, he didn’t try to attack anyone else. He threw the knife away, walked away from the other kids and out of the tent, and did not resist arrest when the police arrived. That doesn’t sound angry. It doesn’t sound planned. It doesn’t sound unjustified. It sounds like a difficult situation that would have triggered fight or flight responses and been difficult for anyone, especially a 17-year-old.

It seems wholly reasonable that this could be self-defense. The fact that it could have been means that the jury shouldn’t have convicted him of murder. We often forget this, but the prosecution is supposed to carry the burden of proof, not the defendant. If there is ANY reasonable doubt, the jury shouldn’t be convicting at all, let alone with a murder charge when they had the option to choose a lesser charge like manslaughter. So, why did they do it? Well, I can’t say. I wasn’t there. What we do know is that the jury was all white, so no matter what happened between the jurors, we know it happened from the perspective of people with different racial experiences, which influences how they would have judged. It also influences their ability, or lackthereof, to understand Anthony’s perspective in any real way. Nevertheless, they sentenced Karmelo to 35 years on June 9th, 2026.

Cyrus Carmack-Belton

The second impactful situation the Black community is dealing with is the trial of Rick Chow, who shot and killed Cyrus Carmack-Belton. For context, this happened in South Carolina. Rick is a 61 year old Asian man and Cyrus was a 14 year old Black kid. There is footage of this entire situation, both inside and outside the store. The situation began when Cyrus entered a store owned by Rick. Rick followed Cyrus around the store from the time he entered. Cyrus opens a fridge, looks around for a minute, then starts to leave. Rick stops him. Cyrus shows Rick that there’s nothing in his pockets despite Rick having no justification for his accusation, then Cyrus walks out of the store peacefully. Rick and two others follow Cyrus out of the store with a rifle in hand. Cyrus spots them following and starts running for his life. In fact, his shoe flies off in the video and he’s still running. With Cyrus’s back turned as he ran away, Rick shot him. Rick was found not guilty by yet another all white jury on account of “self defense”.

I shouldn’t even have to say that this is bullshit. This is the most simple, uncomplicated case possible. There’s video of the whole situation. There’s no room for debate or doubt. In order to be defending yourself, you have to be getting attacked. We know for a fact that Rick wasn’t being attacked because there’s video showing Cyrus running away. It’s so simple that I can’t even say anything else about it because there is literally no other perspective to give. Yet, Rick Chow will face no legal consequences. His court decision was rendered June 1st.

Wow…

Right? It’s striking, isn’t it? One Black kid pleading self defense after stabbing someone he was already actively in a physical conflict with is sentenced to 35 years while another Black kid is dead and his killer will face legal consequences after claiming self defense even though there was no physical conflict and the kid was running with his back turned—the two decisions rendered barely a week apart, both in red states, both by all white juries. The message it sends to the Black community: “You can’t defend yourself in any situation, but we’ll accept any one claiming self defense if they kill you.”

This message is horrifying and unacceptable. How is that freedom? How is that justice? How is that having equal rights? It doesn’t make sense. The racism that left Black people’s ancestors in chains is the same racism that killed Malcom X and Dr. King and the same racism that killed Cyrus and caged Karmelo. It needs to stop. According to THIS article from the Princeton Legal Journal, this is what we’re up against:

1. United States accounts for approximately 25% of the world’s prison population, despite accounting for just 5% of the world’s population overall.

2. Cost of incarceration in the United States of America sits at approximately $80 billion per year for the taxpayer.

3. Corporations within the private prison industry are estimated to bring in an estimated $374 million annually.

Private prison industry is opportunely positioned to make a profit from cheap prison labor. The labor, however, is exploitative not only to incarcerated individuals but also to taxpayers. At play within this legal situation is the profit of corporations complicit in the prison industry, the well-being of incarcerated individuals, and the financial implications for the taxpayer.

That’s called SLAVERY. And its happening to who? Black people. THIS page by Prison Policy Initiative, compiles information from various sources that can show you how we know its happening disproportionally and unfairly to Black people. Rather than explaining that here, I’m going to place a list of ways that you can help this Juneteenth, as well as during all the other days of the year.

How can I help?

Help via financial contribution to organizations. Here’s some suggestions:

NAACP (fights for the Black communities interests in many ways),

The Innocence Project (helps people who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes),

National Bail Out (helps bail out people who are only in jail because they can’t afford the bail).

Help via financial contributions to Black people directly. Here’s some suggestions:

Shop Black-owned businesses like Blerd,

Read books by Black authors,

Listen to music by Black artists.

Help by speaking up. Here’s some suggestions:

Write about it.

Post about it.

Talk to your friends, family, and community about it.

Help by standing up. Here’s some suggestions:

If you are at a protest and you are white, position yourselves at the front of the crowd if you can. I know it’s scary, but you being at the front could actually be the thing that prevents attacks from police and keeps the protesters from being attacked. Not to say it will definitely stop them, but there’s a better chance of them holding back if they see a slew of white people. To be clear, you will be putting your safety at risk. Also to be clear, Black people have had to put their safety at risk to fight against these things for centuries. That’s part of protesting.

Gravitate towards movements you notice are being led, planned, or heavily supported by Black people.

Disrupt stuff. Sorry, but you can’t protest and follow all the rules. I’m not saying you have to be violent. I’m saying you have to be a problem. Examples of extremely diruptive but totally peaceful protestors:

MLK Jr.,

Ghandi,

Mandela.

Shut down roads, train stations, shopping centers, and anything that will make life extremely inconvenient while also costing the people in power a ton of money. That’s disruption. A great example is the vets who staged that sit in at Union Station. That’s effective protest and would work if it happened on a larger scale.

Keep Learning:

Here’s some awesome Black educators who you can learn more about racism, resistance, and intersectionality from:

https://www.instagram.com/theconsciouslee/

https://www.instagram.com/thejaampod/

https://www.instagram.com/hopegiselle/

https://www.instagram.com/diamondpostedthat/

That’s about all I have for today. I hope you learned something from this segment of Nerdology 101. I’ll be back for another next Friday. Until then, have a nerdy week!

Nerdology 101: The Magic of Pride

Hey there! Welcome back to Nerdology 101. It’s pride!!!!! In honor of that, I’m dedicating this blog post to pride month. Let’s get into some Nerdology!

History and Relevance

If you don’t already know, Pride Month dates back to the Stonewall Uprising, a protest from LGBTQIA+ that came about because gay bars and other LGBTQIA+ friendly spaces were being attacked by the feds. The uprising was led by Marsha P. Johnson, a Black trans woman, and Sylvia Rivera, a Puerto Rican trans woman. It lasted 6 days and on it’s first anniversary, many of those who rose up in those 6 days returned. The celebration they held that day, taking to the streets, was marked as the first Pride.

Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera were advocates for their community all their lives. Each June, we continue to honor their legacy by honoring the communities they fought so hard to protect. Today, Pride has been distorted in many ways. In part, by capitalism. The involvement of corporate entities led many to forget what Pride is supposed to be about. Instead, to many it’s now reduced to a good time and some rainbow colored merch. It’s important that those who aren’t members of the LGBTQIA+ community do better because it’s our complacency that allows continued attacks on LGBTQIA+ rights. An ally needs to fight with the community in the hard times, not just celebrate with them when it’s convenient. Activism will always require you to be active. Action is important, so today I want to give you a list of action items that will help the community.

Action Items

1. Buy from businesses owned by queer people. Not just during pride. Whenever you can. This also means supporting artists who are members of the community. Books, music, paintings, designers, etc.

2. Donate to organizations helping queer people. These can be local, national, or international. Just make sure they’re actually doing something to help. If you’re from the Eastern Shore like I am, CAMP LGBTQIA+ Community Center is a great choice. They help LGBTQIA+ people find community in Sussex County, DE, Delaware’s most rural and right-leaning county. Other, larger, organizations can include The Trevor Project, Transgender Law Center, and more.

3. Don’t ignore intersectionality. The LGBTQIA+ community is marginalized, period. But as with any marginalized community, there are people within it who fall into other marginalized groups. This includes Black and brown people, women, disabled people, and more. When someone falls into more than one marginalized group, they often face more discrimination and have to fight on more than one front. Don’t overlook them. Find their businesses, their art, their social media, and support them. Listen to them, what they need, and anything else they want to and just listen. There are endless creators that make content to educate people on intersectionality. Don’t take offense. Don’t act like you know more about their experience than they do. It is okay sometimes to just listen, take the feedback, and do the work.

4. Learn. Seriously, do research on your own. Though some LGBTQIA+ people might be fine answering questions you have about their identities, some times it can also be burdensome having to explain yourself constantly. Plenty of educational materials already exist. There’s articles, books, research, and more. It’s great that you want to learn, but try using a library or the internet to do so. Then, once you’ve done some legwork of your own, you can ask individual people about their personal experiences and identity if they feel comfortable with that instead of expecting one person to explain every identity to you.

5. Remember that association with one doesn’t mean you’re safe for all. You can’t call yourself and ally and only be prepared to stand up for gay people or lesbians. You can’t pick and choose which identities deserve rights. If you have a negative viseral reaction to anyone under the umbrella, do the work to be better.

To Members of the Community

For most of this post, I’ve primarily been addressing allies. This is because I felt the best way to support you this pride was to make sure your allies had some clear action items to help them be better allies. Now, though, I want to talk to you directly.

I say this a lot when posting about the community, but I feel its important to repeart. No matter your identity, it’s valid. Being gay or lesbian is valid. Being Bi or pan or omni is valid. Being trans, two spirit, or nonbinary is valid. Being ace/aro is valid. Whether your questioning, not out, or out, your experiences ARE valid. No matter how many times the world tries to tell you it isn’t, it is. The world is wrong. Fuck them. I’m glad you exist.

Also, if you have anything at all you’d like to add, I’m happy to listen and update this post anonomously. I’ll do my best to amplify your voice wherever possible.

Love ya, you wonderful humans!

Conclusion

That’s about it for this segment of Nerdology 101. Check back next week for another. Until then, have a nerdy week and a wonderful pride.

Nerdology 101: Diversity in the Nerdom

Hello and welcome back to Nerdology 101, the blog where, at least for this week, I say things that should be obvious because the Nazi’s among us don’t seem to get the point that they are the only ones that aren’t welcome here. This week we’re talking about diversity in the nerdy world. So, let’s dive right in.

The nerdy community wouldn’t exist without diversity. Let me say it louder for the people in the back: THE NERDY COMMUNITY WOULDN’T EXIST WITHOUT DIVERSITY.

Being a nerd is a concept that began its evolution some time between 1930 and 1980, according to Merriam-Webster. While the etymology of the word isn’t extremely clear, we do know that it has taken on a few different meanings since its creation. It’s been used to call people socially inept, intelligent, socially inept with intelligence, and more. Today, we mostly use it to describe those who are enthusiastic and knowledgable about a niche topic such as gaming, books, anime, etc. This is important to remember because the concept of nerd we know today didn’t even start to form until the 90’s. Millenials fueled and witnessed the shift ourselves when we woke up at 5AM every day to watch Inuyasha on Adult Swim and popularized series Divergent, Hunger Games, Dune, and Lord of the Rings. Thus, nerd culture is still relatively new to society.

Part of the reason nerd culture took off with such ferocity is because it reached the disinfranchised. Do you know how rare it was to see a Black person in a TV fantasy series in 2006? How about a Black person who wasn’t depicted in a racist way or who only showed up once for five seconds only to never be seen again? Bleach did it, though. Most popular is the character Yoruichi, who we all know and love, they also had quite a few others who were well written with brown skin. The same goes for Naruto—though there were flaws in the way they did it—characters like Karui and Darui are met a need American media was completely ignoring at the time. This type of representation attracted diverse communities that drove the success of anime. In these statistics released by Crunchyroll in 2024, we see that the amount of Black anime fans has been rising drastically with each generation with only 9% of Boomer anime fans being Black, 13% of Gen X, 19% of Millenials, 23% of anime watchers in Gen Z. That’s almost a quarter of anime fans in Gen Z that are Black. If you include other ethnic minority groups, 48% of anime fans in Gen Z are not White. Beyond ethnicity, over 1/3 of the total anime watching community across generations is women with the highest two generations (Millenials and Gen Z) both being over 40% and 32% of across generations identifying as LGBTQIA+ in some way. These are massive portions of anime’s fanbase. Without that diversity, the style would take massive hits likely resulting in worse animation, storytelling, etc. More than that, though, it’s insane to call yourself a nerd if you hate such a large portion of the community you’re identifying with.

Aside from anime, we also have substantial diversity in the bookish community, gaming community, and every other aspect of nerdom. Just recently, a Mixed race author who I look up to, Amber V. Nicole, topped the USA Today and NYT Bestseller lists with her new release, The Wrath of the Fallen in the Gods and Monsters series. Julian Winters made the Marie Claire “25 Best Romance Books of 2025” list with his book I Think They Love You. Tracy Deonn, Analeigh Sbrana, Harley Laroux, and the list goes on—diverse authors are thriving with the support of diverse readers. We would lose a ton of great writing without the diversity that is getting attacked by so many.

In information released by Women in Games, 53% of gamers are men and 46% are women with the remaining 1% being non-binary or putting “I prefer not to say”. 38% of gamers are an ethnicity other than white. Thus, this extends to gaming as well. Every corner of the wider nerdom is filled with diversity. So, why is it that the bigoted ideas that harm so many within the community still thrive? The only answer I can come to is silence. So many are afraid to speak up when something is wrong for fear that no one will stand with them and that they’ll only isolate themselves further. In a video posted by Tony Weaver Jr. following the death of a Black cosplayer named Ash, he calls for us not just to be more inclusive towards Black people in the nerdom, but also for us to be more exclusive towards those who making the sort of bigoted comments that led to Ash’s death to begin with. This sort of hatred has no place in our community and I agree with what Tony is saying here. We need to drive the hatred out by making it harder for it to exist in the first place. Our community will be better for it, just as it has been better for the increased diversity throughout the generations.

That’s all I have for you this week. Drop in next Friday at 3PM ET for our next segment of Nerdology 101. Until then, have a nerdy week!