… for two important reflections on the possibilities and perils of the black Christian intellectual: here and here. What both of these pieces suggest is that the Mannheim definition of the intellectual that I used in my essay for Harper’s has difficulty capturing the particular social situation of the black thinker. This makes me wonder whether the best way to address this problem is by expanding the definition of the intellectual in some way, or by thinking of the black intellectual as a unique case requiring its own distinctive definitional boundaries. In any case I’m  grateful for the generous interlocution; Lloyd has given me a lot of important stuff to think about.