Steven Biko Quotes

Black Consciousness seeks to infuse the black community with a new-found pride in themselves, their efforts, their value systems, their culture, their religion and their outlook to life.

Black people cannot and will not become integrated into American society on any terms but those of self-determination and autonomy.

The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.

I think Black people need to take self-esteem seriously.

The Nation of Islam's main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn't want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people's neighborhoods?

If a Black American may not enter this theater, this black Egyptian will not enter.

The world has made being black a crime .... I hope to make it a virtue.

Black power means Black dignity

To demand these God-given rights is to seek black power

All black art, post-slavery, has always tried to prove in its own way that a black life is the equivalent of anyone else's.

The black radical agenda, which pushes us closer to freedom and the agenda to which I subscribe, calls for an eradication of white supremacy and an adoption of values and traditions endowed from the black experience.

In America, a black man has to feel like he's God just to make it a little bit when white people can just feel human. They can just be themselves, but for me, I feel we have to start instilling that back into our people. That pride. That black power. That privilege to be alive.

My mom went through civil rights; my dad went through civil rights. My name was Kenya because they wanted to give me an African name.

Black is beautiful.

My kids are the reason I continue to strive for something better. They know - as kids who are Muslim, Somali, black Americans - that they've always been part of a struggle and that change isn't easy.

Black people have to define who we are, or others do it for us.

Black Consciousness therefore takes cognizance of the deliberateness of God's plan in creating Black people black.

Our [black people's] path is clear: We refuse to be inferior. We want to be exactly what Allah (God) has desired for us to be and we can't be that in their [white people's] house. We either have to take over their house or go and build a house of our own.

If integration will get [black man] that [respect as the human being], all right. If segregation will get him that, all right. If separation will get him that, all right.But after he gets integration and he still doesn't have this dignity and this recognition as a human being, then his problem is still not solved.

[Black nationalism] is not designed to make the black man reevaluate the white man--you know him already--but to make the black man re-evaluate himself. Don't change the white man's mind; you can't change his mind. And that whole thing about appealing to the moral conscience of America--America's conscience is bankrupt.

The most dangerous thing in American society is a self-respecting and self-loving black person, because they're on the road to freedom and that means they're gonna run up against the powers that be.

Malcolm X never renounced and never stepped away from a strong commitment to black nationalism and black self-determination. That's absolutely clear if you do any analysis of his speeches.

What I'm doing ain't about hating White people. It's about loving us.

The battle was first waged over the right of the Negro to be classed as a human being with a soul; later, as to whether he had sufficient intellect to master even the rudiments of learning; and today it is being fought out over his social recognition.

Now, then, in order to understand white supremacy we must dismiss the fallacious notion that white people can give anybody their freedom.