What Makes Minorities Cool?

After watching Shaft, I have been trying to figure out whether or not minorities have some kind of innate coolness that exists simply because they are minorities. Take the example of John Shaft. His coolness comes primarily from the way he has to overcome great obstacles to protect the innocent people of Harlem. Because he is an African American man, he must overcome racial boundaries in addition to his struggles for justice. From this, it can be deduced that the effect of being a minority on Shaft is that it increases the difficulty of his primary struggles, and because he overcomes these harder struggles, he is slightly cooler than he would be if he was white.

Another minority that is cool is the Russian cosmonaut Lev Andropov from the movie Armageddon. When the space shuttle crews meet the cosmonaut on board the Russian space station, he is very eccentric from living alone for months with little contact with other humans. As a result of a lack of interest in space travel in recent years, Lev believes that he will be in the shadow of the heroes that are flying to take out the asteroid. However, when his space station explodes due to an accident, Lev must act to save the astronauts. From this point forward, Lev performs heroic acts selflessly to help the astronauts destroy the asteroid. Lev's Russian heritage also helps to amplify his coolness. Because he is not American, he must overcome the cultural barrier that exists between him and the astronauts. This increases the amount of work that is required for Lev to reach his goals, and because these goals are reached, he is cooler as a result.

As a general case, minority coolness is not generated as a direct result of being a minority. In all cases where a minority is cool, the ethnicity of the cool person is simply another obstacle that the person must overcome. In effect, the only cool minorities are the minorities who transcend their ethnicity in order to reach an ultimate goal which is independent of their original minority. A few more examples of this are T E Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, Bruce Lee and his promotion of Jeet Kune Do, and Dr. Foreman from House.

Minority coolness is opposed by sheer minority stereotyping. When done tastefully, stereotypes can be explored through satire to produce comedic effect. However, when done without taste, there is nothing more uncool than stereotyping. A perfect example of uncool minorities is the movie Soul Plane. When characters act in a way that does nothing more than promoting generalizations about a race, there is no way that the character can be cool. However, when minority characters overcome racial differences and fight for a good cause, they truly become cool.