Black Freaks, Black F**s, Black Dy**s: Re-imagining Rebecca Walker’s “Black Cool”

Given this, it seems to me that any notion of black cool that is only imagined as being exercised or embodied by black masculine men and/or some masculine women is, well, played out. Black cool is multi-textured, unrestrictive, and forever changing. We black folk are diverse in our embodiments, sexual identities, and gender expressions; therefore, our imaginations of black cool, if they are to be unrestrictive, should be vast enough to consider feminine women, feminine men, gender variant/trans men and women, and differently abled individuals.

Indeed, coolness, like queerness, comes as the result of a type of unsettling, a desire for something different. Thus, it seems that the black “freaks,” “fags,” “femmes,” and “dykes” among us might be experts in the art of embodying black cool, after all.

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