Cool Like Me: Are Black People Cooler Than White People?
From the late, great Might Magazine, Donnell Alexander on the racial roots of cool:
I’m the kinda nigga who’s so cool that my neighbor bursts into hysterical tears whenever I ring her doorbell after dark. She is a new immigrant who has chosen to live with her two roommates in our majority-black Los Angeles neighborhood so that, I’m told, she can “learn about all American cultures.” But her real experience of us is limited to the space between her Honda and her front gate; thus, much of what she has to go on is the vibe of the surroundings and the images emanating from the television set that gives her living room a minty cathode glow. As such, I’m a cop-show menace and a shoe commercial demi-god—one of the rough boys from our ‘hood and the living, breathing embodiment of hip hop flava. And if I can’t fulfill the prevailing stereotype, the kids en route to the nearby high school can. The woman is scared in a cool world. She smiles as I pass her way in the light of day, unloading my groceries or shlepping my infant son up the stairs. But at night, when my face is visible through the window of her door lit only by the bulb that brightens the vestibule, I, at once familiar and threatening, am just too much.
