Black Conciousness Analysis

525 Words3 Pages
1. With the definition of blacks “as those who are by law or tradition politically, economically and socially discriminated against”, Stephen Biko wants to express that a person described as a “black” is not just a person with dark skin, but someone who is oppressed by law and tradition of other ethnicities and fights against it. According to Biko, there are people with white skin that are part of the white community, the “whites”, that there are people that aspire to be “white” but can't be because of their skin color, and that there are “blacks” who accept their skin color and their own culture. Here is where the difference is made by Biko, where a “non white” is a black person who submits to the “whites” society and tries to adapt to it, while a true “black” is defiant to white oppression and fights for his identity as an equal human being. A “black” is therefore not simply a “black”, in Biko's definition, one has to actually fight against the oppression of the african culture and society by the white man in order to be defined as a “true” black. 2. Black Consciousness is the realization of the black people in South Africa that they are not lower creatures than whites, that they are equal human beings with their own culture and that they need to stand up and fight together in order to end their oppression. Steve Biko explains that Black Consciousness seeks to fight the lie that “black” is an aberration of the normal, the “white”. It wants black people to realize that they need to stop trying to emulate the white man and instead start to develop their own, black culture, lest they insult whoever created them black. The black community needs to be taught to take pride in themselves, in what their ancestors and them have accomplished and in the culture they have built. These values can only be lived, however, when black people free themselves from the bondage
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