steve biko i write what i like chapter summary

In order to believe this seriously, it needs to convince itself of all the arguments that support the lie. However, tradition has it that whenever a group of people has tasted the lovely fruits of wealth, security and privilege it begins to find it more comfortable to believe in the obvious lie and to accept it as normal that it alone is entitled to privilege. The leaders of the white community had to create some kind of barrier between black and whites so that the whites could enjoy privileges at the expense of blacks and still feel free to give a moral justification for the obvious exploitation that pricked even the hardest of white consciences. There is no doubt that the colour question in South African politics was deliberately introduced for economic reasons.

It is relevant here because we believe that an anomalous situation is a deliberate creation of man.

In other words, the “Black Consciousness” approach would be irrelevant in a colourless and non-exploitative egalitarian society. In doing so, I do now wish to concern myself unnecessarily with the white people if South Africa, but to get to the right answers, we must ask the right questions we have to find out whether our position is a deliberate creation of God or an artificial fabrication of the truth by power-hungry people whose motive is authority, security, wealth and comfort.

‘It is perhaps fitting to star by examining why it is necessary for us to think collectively about a problem we never created. This is from chapter 14, titled, ‘Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity’. It is a poison i hate to have to admit to, and am not entirely sure of the antidote, except to keep reminding myself daily that it was a construct that the system i grew up in, strongly wanted and enforced me to believe. When i see it in myself…īut somewhere along the line of growing up in an apartheid society, i can see that this idea rubbed off on me.

Not true that the black man is inferior, but that the idea of the black man being inferior has been so deeply entrenched in so many of us, that it is an extremely hard and horrible thing to admit to when we see it in ourselves. This is a hard but necessary passage to share from Steve Biko’s ‘I Write What I Like’ which you should totally get hold of and read in its entirety.

Steve biko i write what i like chapter summary