Days of Black Weeaboos Past

Onyx Contributor:  H.T. (@517NightHawk), Podcast:  Lansing Anti-Hero

In all my talks about black nerds and all our dysfunctions, it’s time we all talked about a part of black nerdom that we are all familiar with but don’t like to talk about because I think we all can admit that no matter how old we get that the shit’s cringe worthy.  I’m of course talking about Black weeaboos.

I know Gil. I too am questioning what the fuck is going on here. Except I know.

The thing that sets black weeaboos apart from all others isn’t even that were black.  It’s that the clear degree of difficulty to be one WHILE black is kinda remarkable in hindsight.  Hell, just black people who cosplay deserve respect as really how many of us actually know where a fabric store is or live near one?  Other than that being black and weeaboo, while at best is hilarious in observation, is also kind of a labor of love.  Think about it, how many of us grew up with cable?  That alone makes it hard to keep up with your favorite shows.  Seriously, I can remember missing weeks of Gundam Wing to where by the time I got back to the show I hadn’t realized that the main bad guy had been killed.  

Beyond that, weeabooism that in the time which I came up and went through my stage was truly a challenge.  Not to be morbid, but there have been cases where even if you’re a black guy dressed like a anime character, the cops still treat you like a nigger with a sword.  Beyond that, shit was kind of a uphill battle.  Seriously, if it were just getting teased or beat up for liking what you like, I think being a weeaboo would have been light work.  But It really was a challenge.  Aside from the cable, just finding tapes was a pain in the ass.  See, this was before Bittorrent and really the closest option back then was to make your PC Easy E positive with LimeWire or BearShare, so essentially you were at the mercy of whatever retailer that sold anime.  Granted, a lot of them were Asian surplus stores which even now have a tendency to sell bootleg shit, but hey, you got it cheaper than had you tracked down a copy on the internet.  Then…there’s Suncoast.

If I can give Best Buy any credit, it’s that they sell Anime DVDs now at prices knowing you could easily pirate this shit.  Suncoast?  Those guys didn’t give a FUCK.  Seriously, 35 bucks for a DVD of Solty Rei that only had 3 episodes on it.  And what’s more, the only malls that tended to have a fucking Suncoast were the ones in the malls that white people went to, so now here I am in the mall full of white people who are so white they think Mariah Carey is white.  I’m in this bitch with a trench coat and cargo shorts while wearing a Naruto Headband, my boys over here in a King of Fighters club shirt, JNCO jeans with his locks just flourishing like Eddie Gordo.  Got another guy with us with his hair relaxed to where this nigga looks like what Justin Bieber thinks he looks like when he says nigga.  And his girlfriend, a black girl in a Japanese sailor schoolgirl outfit and cat ears.  As you can imagine, we got teased a lot.  We thought we looked badass when we bought the bamboo swords, but really we looked like the biggest fucking plebes riding the bus with those fucking things.

Pretty much this.

When it came to social media, to this day, I know black people who still never use their actual picture as their avi.  This shit started with MySpace and never let up.  But shit got real when MySpace added the function to have songs play when people went on their page.  Seriously, I would have Heart of Sword from Rurouni Kenshin playing when you went on my page, but wondered why girls never put me in their top 8.  As far as anime music went, if you could find a site with the actual songs on mp3, you were seen as a god.  I made over 100 bucks selling custom anime music OSTs for 5 bucks a pop in high school but somehow wasn’t smart enough to figure out how to lose my V-Card back then.  Go figure.  What’s more, every fucking weeaboo thinks we can learn Japanese from watching anime, but what’s far worse is every black nerd thinks Japan is the promise land from the racism and suffering of just being black in America.  Never mind that those people don’t really like us either, but to be fair it’s less hate and more “We’ve never actually interacted with your culture outside of what white people show us about it.”  Seriously, you wanna know why all K-pop sounds like 90s R&B?  Cause those guys didn’t get BET till 2004, so Aaron Hall and Teddy Riley is new to them.  Seriously, if you were to tell me there were Korean AKAs and Alumni from Morehouse, I wouldn’t be shocked.

Speaking of which, I’m really not shocked to know that Asian dudes are in style nowadays.  I can look at a guy like Daniel Dae Kim or Russell Wilson and understand why women wanna fuck them.  Dudes on the other hand will lust over ANY ASIAN GIRL and no matter what race she actually is, she’ll be what we want her to be.  Seriously, of the two types of porn that came into popularity when I was growing up, it was Brazilian porn and Asian porn.  But it was sick fucks like me that probably made porn stars like Hitomi Tanaka famous.  Wanna hear a fucked up story?  Back when my family had me walk around the mall for exercise on Saturdays, there was this Asian girl who worked at the cookie place.  Christy I believe was her name.  She was cute, but I was worse with talking to women than I am now, so this was only a path to disaster.  Did I talk to her and try to learn more about her?  Did I buy her something expensive to try and ask her on a date?  Nope.  I did probably the most mid 00s thing imaginable:  I made a rap for her.

See, back then, every black kid had a cousin who fancied himself a rapper.  Mine is a part of internet humor history as he was the cameraman for the guy gets hit by ice cream truck video that was on Tosh.0 (that’s him who you see at the 13 second mark).  Anyway, I went to him to try and record a song for her to tell her how I feel.  To be fair, my rhymes sucked but the beat I chose was fucking fire as far as I was concerned.  As you can guess, she let me down hard as fuck (this is how I learned that Asians don’t tend to date outside their race often) also, my references to her being Japanese was WAY off as she’s actually Vietnamese.  I know.

In short, these were some of the most fun years I had in my life.  I was an outcast, but I was happy, I was authentic, I was me.  I understand any accusation of cultural appropriation, but to me, people like weeaboos were the true carefree black boys and girls.  They lived (or live) a life not beholden to any and all standards set by society or culture and offer no apology.  Laugh if you must, but don’t hate on harmless fun.