Baldwin Insight

"If you move out of your place everything is changed. If I'm not what the white man thinks I am, then he has to find out what he is."

Prince of Tides

"But it is the mystery of life that sustains me now. I look to the north, and I wish again that there were two lives apportioned to every man -- and every woman."

Some Kind of Black Man

A good black man. We hear and say that so much. An intelligent black man. A working black man. 

Black women use these phrases as if such persons are so rare that the adjectives are necessary to specify and distinguish the good/intelligent/working from the less desirable breeds. No, I get it. That IS why black women use these phrases. 

This bothers me. We make these specially labeled black men the exception, and we tell the world that there's something so wrong with black men as a whole that we have to certify them. 

Suggestion: How about we replace those worn-out testimonies with this one: "Now there goes a REGULAR black man!"