Notes on Ball & Dagger reader
Steve Biko (1973)
"Black Consciousness and the Quest for a True Humanity"

Steve Biko (1946-1977)

  You can find a biography of Steve Biko here.

Chronology and context

This will be obvious, but:  this essay was written during the period of South Africa's bloody, oppressive apartheid system, created by (and ruled by) the Nationalist Party.  With the help of a worldwide economic boycott and other sanctions against the government, a new regime, headed by Nelson Mandela, came officially to power in 1994.

Biko wrote this when he was only 26 or 27.

Biko's funeral was the occasion of a unifying of Black nationalist forces.

Biko's thesis

[Distinguish cultural rights from liberation from oppression.  Is assimilation really liberatory?]

Biko is arguing, first, against "development" in the sense that the white power structure defines it — greater integration of Blacks within a competitive, materialist society, a society that ultimately pits Black against Black in a struggle for a false prize defined by whites.  The benefit for whites of this pseudo-development is that their existing advantages remain unchallenged — or at least untouched.

Biko is arguing, second, for a new, uniquely Black consciousness.  Without such a consciousness, Blacks have no ground from which to struggle against white imperialism, an imperialism not just of the body (i.e., through material wealth) but also of the spirit (i.e., through control of one's self-conception).

Biko was accused of preaching race hatred, but this seems false to me.  In seeking an authentic Black consciousness, he was challenging the value of white culture, but it doesn't seem to me that he was challenging whites themselves or the value to them of their own culture.  (Many whites — Marx notable among them — had long criticized the same aspects of the white culture that Biko was.)  Certainly he was challenging white privilege, but whites didn't see themselves as privileged but only as "normal".  (The same conflict goes on today, both re. welfare and re. the debate between adherents of the concepts of "heterosexual privilege" vs. "special rights for gays".)  And to the extent that he was seeking a separation from whites, this seems to me a strategic decision rather than a fundamental value.  The value of separation lay in the necessity of Blacks removing themselves from the domination of a white consciousness in order to pursue their own consciousness;  its value was not in the inherent superiority of Blacks over whites or the ultimate irreconcilability of the two cultures.  But of course little of this was apparent at the time, and Biko's work was (deliberately or not) mistaken for a race hatred, and in the end he was murdered for it.

OTHER, MISCELLANEOUS LECTURE NOTES

Note Biko (the movie)

[(Supposedly) from Thomas Szasz Words to the Wise :]  "In the animal kingdom, the rule is eat or be eaten;  in the human kingdom, define or be defined.   He who defines dominates and lives.  He who is defined is subjugated and destroyed."

Black theology  [Note connection with Liberation Theology;  note Christian message of liberation]
Black history  [Note that history is written by the victors.]
Black consciousness  [Concept of "internalized oppression"]

Note that "Black" is not the same as "anti-white", although it was taken as such by ruling whites.  One of the common problems of oppression is, of course, the oppressor's definition of everything in h/her terms, so that any attempt to exist outside the framework of white rule and white definitions generally is seen as "anti-white".  But to Biko, Black Consciousness was not a rejection of whites or white values per se but rather a refusal to be defined in advance by them.  Biko wanted Blacks to search for their own values.  See, for example, p.354A, where Biko says that Blacks should not be so preoccupied with whites.

As critique:

• Not a critique of white values but of white dominance
• Critique of Black behavior:
  • adoption of white judgments & ideals (internalized oppression)
  • begging for liberties
  • reliance on white liberals.  (Recall his own dissatisfaction ca. 1968 with the liberal-dominated National Union of South African Students.)
  • competition of Black with Black.
• Critique of integration as a political and/or social direction.

As construction:  ??  Opposition to an external driving force is natural, but we need to be independent of it.  A tray of water sloshing?

Was Biko a terrorist?  Why was he called one?  [See the above comment on Black vs. anti-white.]  [We also need to ask about whether the term itself is at all useful.  Is it no more than a dominant power insisting that others obey its rules, i.e., the rules that keep it in power?]

What to do?

• Tactically:
  • moral suasion?  [Doesn't seem to work?]
    • vs.
  • violence?  [Perpetuates violence?]
• Goals:
  • Integration?  [Futile, and self-destructive]
    • vs.
  • separation?  [But we still have the problem of getting along with each other.]

Valuing of Black culture and values that have survived colonialism.  "Colonialism" vs. "civilizing" (bone in the nose;  savages)

Opposition to Bantustans?  [Define.]

• Opposition is good:  Bantustans were used by whites to divide and impoverish Blacks.
• Opposition is bad:  Bantustans may actually have different groups and cultures and allow them to flourish.  Thus "Nigerian" submerges "Hausa", "Yoruba", "Ibo", etc.

It would be interesting to think about what a "white culture" might look like separated out from the oppression of others.

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