The Hard Core Of Cool

Yet the mystique that empowers men can disempower them, too. What's cool among some black men today too often suggests coldness -- a distancing from their feelings, for which a heavy price is paid: By women more drawn to chilled-out shells than to warm, accessible hearts. By children whose fathers are less concerned with raising them than with fighting to the death for "respect." And always by brothers who reject the stereotype.

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The Roots of Cool

Men everywhere find cool a tough taskmaster. But its particular burden on black men is explained by an all-American trifecta: Slavery, Jim Crow and ongoing institutional racism. Society "didn't allow them to be men in the traditional sense" as providers and protectors, says Duke University associate professor of African and African American studies Mark Anthony Neal. Style became "where [black men] could express their masculinity."

During slavery, Neal continues, "the only thing [black people] could claim as their own was their style. What else could they bring uniquely to [the] world, whether it was in how they'd sing in the fields, how they played games, the way they danced?"

I may not own my body, slaves' distinct style hinted. But I can make you look at me, envy me, and be revolted by me. Whatever you take away, I'll make something amazing from that which remains.

But it was tricky, putting a personal stamp on slaves' dangerously circumscribed world. Displays of insubordination and rebellion were punishable by whippings, separation from loved ones, even death. Keeping cool -- masking your intellect, rage and affection -- didn't just make you less vulnerable. It could save your life. Black men's dual mastery of the hidden and the flamboyant became so compelling it spilled into myth, making the combination -- cool -- something people unconsciously sought from them.

Black British designer Ozwald Boateng creates narrow-cut suits worn by Jude Law and Jamie Foxx, and is fascinated by African American men's devotion to style. Boateng, whose parents emigrated from Ghana, can trace his family history for "centuries -- my confidence is rooted in that," he says.

African American men's comparative rootlessness explains their fabled confidence, Boateng, 39, suggests. "To be honest, I'm not even sure black men have as much confidence as they have the appearance of it, which can be a way of compensating" for a painful past, he says.

Or as my younger brother once put it: "Sometimes, cool is all that we have."

Fast-food restaurant manager Tony Blount of Greenbelt won't cut his foot-long dreadlocks, even though he is convinced they have cost him job opportunities. His locks remind him of "my ancestors," Blount, 31, says. "There's stuff only me and my hair know about. . . . If I change myself for every job, I'll be changing forever."

Brothercool runs so deep that black professionals in corporate America smuggle cool like contraband into their wardrobes. "You learn to be distinctive in the little things -- your ties, cuff links," says Jack "Rusty" O'Kelley, 38, a black manager at Katzen Bach Partners, a Manhattan firm that advises Fortune 500 companies. On Madison Avenue, "all the brothers I see . . . have that sense of individuality," he says. Balancing style with substance means "never getting mistaken for the copy guy or the doorman."