Steve Biko
South African · 1946–1977
South African anti-apartheid activist and founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, who argued that the most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed, and was killed in police custody at the age of thirty.
Wikipedia ↗“The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
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“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 — the blackness of their skin — and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.”
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“It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realize 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.”
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“Being black is not a matter of pigmentation — being black is a reflection of a mental attitude. You are black only when you can say: I shall relate to myself as a complete human being.”
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“You are either alive and proud or you are dead, and when you are dead, you can't care anyway. And your method of death can itself be a politicizing thing.”
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“The basic tenet of Black Consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.”
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