Steven Biko Quotes

The possibility of a liberal capitalist democracy in South Africa is exactly nil. The racialist propaganda amongst the whites and their desire to maintain what they imagine to be a profitable situation makes it utterly unthinkable that there can be a political alignment that favours a liberal white group. In any case the political immorality, cowardice and vacillation of the so—called progressives amongst the whites render them utterly useless as a force against fascism.

White society will not listen to preaching. They will not listen to their liberals. Liberalism has not grown within white society, and we blacks cannot stand idly by watching the situation. We can only generate a response from white society when we, as blacks, speak with a black voice and say what we want. Now has come the time when we, as blacks, must articulate what we want, and put it across to the white man, and from a position of strength.

When I say, I don't care what white people think, I mean that.

I went to an all white school where I dealt with racism.

There is no more apartheid in South Africa than in the United States.

For me, personally, life in South Africa had come to an end. I had been lucky in some of the whites I had met. Meeting them had made a straight 'all-blacks-are-good, all-whites-are-bad' attitude impossible. But I had reached a point where the gestures of even my friends among the whites were suspect, so I had to go or be forever lost.

My concern is what will happen to that white minority in the future because…with all our suffering, we are being hardened. The government claims that it would be committing suicide by not giving us political rights.

There must be a just native policy or the white man would go under in South Africa.

When I consider the political future of the Natives in South Africa I must say that I look into shadows and darkness, and then I feel inclined to shift the intolerable burden of solving that sphinx problem to the ampler shoulders and the stronger brains of the future.

Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked.

[T]he agents are white Southerners who have been influenced by the mores of the community. To maintain their status, they have to be friendly with the local police and people who have been promoting segregation.

The American paradigm of race requires that there be an ‘other’ - and the other is Black people. That's what makes white people, white.

Segregation is a disease of white people, not of colored people.

The Southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the Reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination

The presence of the black man in this country is a curse to both races. It keeps the white man lying, stealing, misrepresenting, and the black man abusing, vilifying, and cursing, and neither white nor black can be Christian. I pray God you will continue in the great work in which you are engaged, and move this country to help the negro to emigrate to the land of his ancestors.

In the land of my birth I cannot vote, whereas a young person of eighteen can vote. And why? Because he or she possesses that wonderful biological attribute — a white skin.

The collective memory of race relations in the United States overlooks and omits the reality of mixed race. There existed a squeamishness, a disgust, a denouncement of “race mixing” that sparked riots, instituted legal prohibitions, and constructed categories, each of which insist upon the genealogical separation of black, white, and red.

The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent ... I would preserve for free white labor a fair country ... where the sons of toil, of my own race and own color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor.

You are, in fact, stigmatized as a racist, because, after all, you have know acknowledged that your nation practiced racism explicitly for four centuries. And, now, since the '60s, white Americans have been grappling with the stigma, trying prove that they are not racist, to prove the negative.

I never ceased to be surprised when southern whites, at their homes or clubs, told racial jokes and spoke so derogatorily of blacks while longtime servants, for whom they quite clearly had some affection, were well within earshot.

Growing up in a predominantly white area of the predominantly white state of Wisconsin, it was, I'm sad to say, relatively easy for me to go through life without recognizing or reckoning with the obvious signs of racism.

I don't understand why black people feel this undying need to want to be down with white people all the time.

I think we are aware that post-racialism isn't real, right? I mean, I hope so. I kind of joke that we're post-post-racial.

I didn't really understand racism because I grew up in an all-black society, so I didn't see how it was possible not to like me!

Everyone is so terrified of being labeled a racist.