Abstract
This paper argues that the cool pose and respectability politics are not inherent expressions of Black masculinity but conditioned survival responses to colonial patriarchy and its legacy of gender suppression. Drawing on a Black queer feminist framework, I trace how systems of violence, economic coercion, and racialized heteronormativity have produced a justified fear that curdles into pervasive anxiety, forcing Black men into rigid, defensive performances. Through close readings of Frederick Douglass’s 1863 “Men of Color, to Arms!” Huey P. Newton’s 1970 letter on women’s and gay liberation, and KB Brookins’s 2024 poem “Name: Black boy,” I show how strategic conformity gave way to internal critique and ultimately to a decolonial demand for self‑definition. Interwoven with personal narrative, the paper concludes that liberation requires not a new performance but an ongoing practice of unlearning inherited scripts and reclaiming the fluid humanity that colonial patriarchy sought to dismantle.
Advisor
Dean, Eagan
Department
English
Recommended Citation
Freeman, Lorenzo, "Decolonizing Black Male Trauma Responses to Colonialism" (2026). Senior Independent Study Theses. Paper 13519.
https://openworks.wooster.edu/independentstudy/13519
Disciplines
Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority
Publication Date
2026
Degree Granted
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type
Senior Independent Study Thesis
© Copyright 2026 Lorenzo Freeman