ARLINGTON, Virginia – William Beal II drove his prized possession, a 2016 Dodge Charger R/T, through a small makeshift entrance on South Clark Street and parked it with the other cars arriving at BlerdCon, a convention centering Black folks who are into geek culture.
Wrapped in the Black Panther colors of black and vibrant purple, Beal’s car – tricked out with more than $4,000 of upgrades – commanded attention. Costumed as the Black Panther, in a handmade traditional Wakandian garment, Beal commanded attention, too.
A small smile stretched across his face as people stopped and took photos of his car – or him. At BlerdCon, he could remove his everyday mask and shield to be among people like him – Blerds, or Black nerds.
“Just to have this space where the Black culture touches anime, cosplay, fashion,” said Beal as he looked around at people walking between the two event spaces of BlerdCon. “It’s a safe space for us to authentically be ourselves, without judgment.”
For nearly a decade, BlerdCon has served as one of the few conventions in the country dedicated to Black fans of anime, comics, gaming, costume play (or “cosplay”), and other geek culture usually dominated by white audiences. Founded in 2017, the Arlington gathering now draws more than 15,000 attendees for a three-day celebration featuring cosplay competitions, gaming tournaments, food trucks, vendors, panel discussions, and parties.
BlerdCon validates the often-marginalized identities and hobbies of Black geeks and gives them a space where they feel a real sense of belonging that is difficult to find in mainstream Black or white spaces. It challenges stereotypes of what it means to be Black.
The 9th annual convention took place this month.
At 42, Beal, who lives in Virginia, was returning for his second consecutive year.
“There’s so many layers of us [Black people] that are still behind closed doors,” said Beal, an Air Force veteran. “The reason why is because that door that we want to open to express ourselves isn’t necessarily the environment where we feel comfortable doing so,” he stated.
BlerdCon’s Roots
Almost a decade ago, BlerdCon opened its doors in this city.
“I just thought to myself how cool it would be if there was a convention that focused on Black nerdom,” said Hilton George, BlerdCon’s co-creator, after participating in mainstream geek conventions.
George stood at the BlerdCon main stage last week, looking around at the sea of people in front of him. Those that he could see past the blaring lights, laughed, danced, and responded back to him as he opened the weekend’s activities.
George’s journey into nerd culture began in third grade, when he was introduced to comic books. During an after-school program, he noticed several classmates in the corner of the room intensely focused on a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Curious, he watched as they used books and character sheets to build imaginary worlds.
One classmate eventually handed him his own character sheet.
“I was hooked,” he said.
The convention world became part of his life after attending MagFest, the music and gaming festival in Maryland. He cosplayed there for the first time, dressing as Raiden, a character from the video game Mortal Kombat, in an outfit that he designed. From there, he began traveling to and attending conventions across the country.
But something was missing. He didn’t see a lot of spaces for folks like him, and there weren’t a lot of spaces for Black nerds.
A 2024 study by Polygon, a gaming news source that produces content and surveys on topics across the gaming world, surveyed more than 4,000 participants and found that Black Americans 18 and older make up about 17% of anime fans.
“I thought something like BlerdCon already existed,” George said. “I just didn’t know where to find it.”
When he discovered the gap, he said he invited as many people as he could who resonated with that vision.
“I want people to come to the convention, only with the anticipation of connecting with one another and contributing to the environment, growing the community, and letting their hair down,” George said. Creating these relationships, he says, can help some survive those 362 days when they aren’t able to be with this community.
The Cosplay Fixer
Kevin Cogdell has been going to BlerdCon every year since 2022.
Last week, he moved through the convention floor with a cart full of tools and his eyes scanning the crowd. The 52-year-old electrical engineer is used to being the only person in the room who looks like him, especially at work. But at BlerdCon, where he’s in a sea of Black faces, he has developed a reputation as a kind of emergency responder for broken costumes.
A loose armor strap. A broken wing. A snapped prop sword. A ripped cape. Cogdell has probably seen it before.
“I’ve been watching anime since before 95% of the people here were born,” he joked.
Growing up in the 1980s, Cogdell was already immersed in manga, anime and fantasy worlds — long before the word “blerd” entered popular culture.
He entered the convention scene after attending San Japan, a large anime and gaming convention in San Antonio. Watching someone dressed as Princess Toadstool chase Toad from Super Mario Bros. down the street near the convention place, he knew he wanted to be part of it.
Soon he began attending conventions regularly. During one event, he stayed with a cosplayer whose costume had broken, helping repair it instead of letting her struggle alone.
That moment changed everything.
“I realized I could actually do this,” he said.
Cogdell began researching costume construction through YouTube tutorials, Facebook groups, and cosplay repair forums. Eventually, he built a mobile repair kit that he now carries to conventions across the country.
His essentials include a hot glue gun, safety pins, and bobby pins.
“I got really deep into it and studied how different costumes are made, and what the most requested items were,” he said.
When he discovered BlerdCon, particularly that it centered Black culture, he knew he had to attend.
“I have an excuse to go now, because I could just repair everybody’s costume, and I could still go and just participate in the shenanigans,” he said, remarking on all the activities included in the convention to embrace Black culture. “It never crossed my mind to charge anybody.”
The Stigmas of Being Black and Weird
Because blerds practice hobbies that fall outside of the Black mainstream, they have often faced put-downs, mockery, and rejection within Black communities
They have been stereotyped as know-it-alls, weird, out-of-touch, and loners. Some wonder if they are too Black for white people and too white for Black people.
“Discrimination of the Black nerd does not stop at the white community border,” George said. “Black people still have a learning curve on how to accept and embrace the weirdos within their own house.”
Cogdell remembers a time when he didn’t feeling comfortable and safe to walk around in his blerdism. Several times a week, he’d walk almost 2 miles with his Walkman to the closest arcade, sneaking past local gangs from his ‘hood, because he didn’t want them to see where he was going.
Dressed in his Nintendo shirt, he’d go to the Nintendo cabinet, squat with his Walkman, and as he played the game, he’d record the music from the game so he could walk around listening to the music outside the arcade.
“I’d look left and right to make sure nobody from school would see me because it was kind of embarrassing,” he said. For a while, he could walk to school listening to game soundtracks until he was caught and teased by the school’s biggest gangsters.
He kept being a nerd, but hid it more.
“I’m a little jealous,” he joked. “It’s cool to be a blerd now, but where was the love when I had on that Nintendo shirt?”
Now an OG, in his words, he believes spaces like BlerdCon are changing the perception of what blerds are.
“We as a people are not a monolith,” Cogdell said. “The world needs to see different aspects of what it is to be Black,” he added.
Growing Black Nerd Presence
Today, BlerdCon is one of the largest Black-led geek conventions in the United States, and organizers hope its success will inspire more spaces like it.
“My job is to create an environment in which people can express themselves and create their own interpersonal experiences with one another,” George said. “That is the real impact of the convention … not the parties, concerts, or gaming.”
As attendees moved between rooms throughout the weekend, greeting strangers like old friends, a sense of familiarity flowed through the convention halls. People like Beal and Cogdell have made it a mission to ensure that, as they walk through spaces like this, they create a bridge so that other Blerds feel comfortable.
“The next generation of nerds are going to have a different relationship to the culture altogether because nerdom isn’t weird anymore, it’s mainstream,” George said.
“Even though your parents might have been bullied for being nerds, you may not,” he said. “You might be the coolest kid in your school because you have a lightsaber,” he joked.