By T. Aaron Cisco<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a child of the 1950s and early 1960s, Doctor Who<\/em> has just made its debut on the horizon, but T. Aaron Cisco\u2019s Black Nerd Blue Box<\/em> resonated with me, especially since I was seen as a Nerd and a brainiac growing up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alternating between external dialogue and the internal dialogue of the Doctor Who<\/em> universe, Mr. Cisco takes us on a journey of the eclectic, and the pitfalls of putting people in a \u201cbox.\u201d All too often, African Americans are placed in a \u201cbox\u201d of stereotypes via ignorance, bias, or prejudice, seen as one monolithic front, even from within. Then, someone like Cisco comes along who challenges this way of thinking, his presence calling out the hypocrisy. I remember well this slogan as a college student in the early \u201870s: \u201cDo your thing.\u201d The subtext, however, was \u201cas long as it conforms to our standards and definitions of what that is,\u201d which I discovered when I put that slogan to the test.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His road wasn\u2019t an easy one, but it was his path to his authentic life. He was blessed with supportive parents during his formative years in Chicago. The ordeal of his mother\u2019s breast cancer taught him valuable lessons. His peers, however, were a challenge, judging him for his love of Doctor Who<\/em>, science fiction, his taste in clothes and music, etc. Being a Nerd, he was seen by them as \u201cother\u201d; as, in his words, a \u201ccappuccino-colored oddball,\u201d he didn\u2019t fit the \u201cbox.\u201d Dealing with racism, he breaks down his experience with its various degrees, from the overt and blatant to the subtle microaggresions from his own truth and take on the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I loved his take on Chicago, the term \u201cschmooey,\u201d and his memory of \u201cVanilla Bean.\u201d In his journey, being a Black Nerd put people on notice, and at the end of the day, his qualities proved to be his strengths. He never gave up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As one who has come up through the ranks of Nerdiness, I thank you, T. Aaron Cisco, for sharing your story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By T. Aaron Cisco As a child of the 1950s and early 1960s, Doctor Who has just made its debut on the horizon, but T. Aaron Cisco\u2019s Black Nerd Blue Box resonated with me, especially since I was seen as a Nerd and a brainiac growing up. Alternating between external dialogue and the internal dialogue of the Doctor Who universe, Mr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":535,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,7],"tags":[268,266,265,267],"class_list":["post-534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-lifestyle","tag-black-nerd","tag-brainiac","tag-nerd","tag-racism","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Black-Nerd-e1738782908519.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/apexsamplework.com\/insightnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}