Black Consciousness Quotes

“Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression.”
― Steve Biko

“It is best to think of culture as a repertoire, like that of an actor,a musician, or a dancer. This image suggests that culture cultivates skills and habits in its users, so that one can be more or less good at the culture repertoire one performs,and that such cultured capacities may exist both as discrete skills,habits and orientations, and in larger assemblages, like the pieces a musician has mastered or the plays a actor has performed. It is in this sense that people have an array of cultural resources upon which they can draw. We can ask not only what pieces are in the repertoire but why some are performed at one time, some at another.”
― Karyn Lacy, Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class

“Existing in this era comes with many contradictions. Contradictions because we have so much to unlearn.”
― Malebo Sephodi

“Until now (1960, date of the first edition), the history of Black Africa has always been written with dates as dry as laundry lists, and no one has almost ever tried to find the key that unlocks the door to the intelligence, the understanding of African society.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop

“The mere fact that they barred equality among races should tell you that we are innately more powerful than them.”
― Shantelee R. Brown

“All in all the black man has become a shell, a shadow of man, completely defeated, drowning in his own misery, a slave, an ox bearing the yoke of oppression with sheepish timidity. This is the first truth, bitter as it may seem, that we have to acknowledge before we can start on any programme designed to change the status quo. It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality. The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth. This is what we mean by an inward-looking process. This is the definition of "Black Consciousness".”
― Steve Biko, I Write What I Like: Selected Writings