While at my local library I noticed the August 2008 edition of Ebony magazine, which featured an essay by William Jelani Cobbs and comments by others on “The Genius of Cool; the 25 Coolest Brothers of All Time.”
Who are the coolest Two-Five?
1. Barack Obama, politician
2. Don Cheadle, actor
3. Billy Dee Williams, actor
4. Sidney Poitier, actor
5. Quincy Jones, music producer
6. Lenny Kravitz, musician
7. Jimi Hendrix, musician
8. Richard Roundtree, actor
9. Denzel Washington, actor
10. Sammy Davis, Jr., entertainer
11. Bob Marley, musician
12. Ed Bradley, journalist
13. Tupac Shakur, rapper
14. Adam Clayton Powell, politician
15. Gordon Parks, photographer
16. Muhammad Ali, boxer
17. Miles Davis, musician
18. Walt Frazier, basketball player
19. Jay-Z (Shawn Carter), rapper
20. Samuel Jackson, actor
21. Malcolm X, nationalist leader
22. Snoop Dogg, rapper
23. Prince, musician
24. Michael Jordan, basketball player
25. Marvin Gaye, singer
Without a doubt each of these individuals do possess what essayist William Jelani Cobbs called the “key elements of coolness”: “self-possession, elegance and the ability fluent in body language…” One might add grace under pressure.
But if one looks at the list one notes that not one black thinker or activist, except perhaps Malcolm X or Adam Clayton Powell, is “cool”—not even Martin Luther King. The vast majority of the these cool brothers are in the entertainment/performance industry.
Black Cool is not of the mind and the intellect and how it is expressed in any cohesive, elegant form, except in the case of Barack Obama, whose cool confidence is often called arrogance. No, the coolness on this list is of the body, which reinforces that “black achievement” is physical, not of the mind and body working in unison.
A majority of those selected are actors and entertainers, men who are paid to exude “coolness” in an artificial arena or to appear as “black coolness.” Black thugs, pimps, and rappers are the essence of black body coolness in post-civil rights America.
Who are the truly cool dudes who exude grace under pressure as an “antidote to the heat of hateration”?
But if one looks at the list one notes that not one black thinker or activist, except perhaps Malcolm X or Adam Clayton Powell, is “cool”—not even Martin Luther King. The vast majority of the these cool brothers are in the entertainment/performance industry.
Black Cool is not of the mind and the intellect and how it is expressed in any cohesive, elegant form, except in the case of Barack Obama, whose cool confidence is often called arrogance. No, the coolness on this list is of the body, which reinforces that “black achievement” is physical, not of the mind and body working in unison.
A majority of those selected are actors and entertainers, men who are paid to exude “coolness” in an artificial arena or to appear as “black coolness.” Black thugs, pimps, and rappers are the essence of black body coolness in post-civil rights America.
Who are the truly cool dudes who exude grace under pressure as an “antidote to the heat of hateration”?
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