Steven Biko Quotes

The devadasis have a multilayered story, a story in which poverty, deprivation and injustice against women is central - but what has happened to them is absolutely an outcome of imperialism and the impact of British rule in India.

The white people … are trying to make us over into their image

A world divided into blocs, in which instead of solidarity, imperialism and exploitation hold sway, can only be a world structured in sin.

Slavery was forced upon us by the most extremist exigency of circumstances in a struggle for very existence. Without it, it is doubtful whether a white man would now be existing on this continent--certain that, if there were, they would be in a states of the utmost destitution, weakness, and misery.

The African is my brother but he is my younger brother by several centuries.

Why didn't we recognize how much it bothered them spiritually and politically?

You get people talking about being worried about their art, and dances... their culture being wiped out or taken over, and yet these same people are taking advantage of their people to use them as cheap labour.

The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does the Negro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.

The supreme issue, involving all others, is the encroachment of the powerful few on the rights of the many. It is against the system built up by privilege that we must make unceasing warfare.

If this country is a melting pot, then either the Afro-American didn't get in the pot or he didn't get melted down.

Had conditions been reversed and the white man suddenly forced to fit himself to the rigorous Indian mode of life, he might now bear the stigma of lazy if, indeed, he were able to survive at all.

Another doctrine, worse still is gaining ground. It is that the colored people are not sufficiently informed to chose what is best for themselves, and that they ought to be compelled to go to Africa. Many colonizationists now avow it openly. And thus there is danger that the society will grow up into one of the most dreadful systems of cruelty that have ever afflicted the world.

White Man’s Road Thru Black Man’s Home!

During the fifteen years in which I have been engaged in administering the laws of my country, I have never been called upon to hear or decide a case that appealed so strongly to my sympathy as the one now under consideration On the one side, we have a few of the remnants of a once numerous and powerful, but now weak, insignificant, unlettered and generally despised race; on the other, we have the representative of one of the most powerful, most enlightened, and most Christianized nations of modern times. On the one side, we have the representatives of this wasted race coming into this national tribunal of ours, asking for justice and liberty to enable them to adopt our boasted civilization, and to pursue the arts of peace, which have made us great and happy as a nation; on the other side, we have this magnificent, if not magnanimous, government, resisting this application with the determination, of sending these people back to the country which is to then less desirable than perpetual imprisonment in their own native land.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

There's a lot of talk now about the PC police, and 'why is everything bad?' It isn't. What it is, is that marginalized and oppressed people who have never had a soapbox, who have never been given a microphone, suddenly have a microphone.

Issues that have relevance to the tribal community have routinely been minimized and ignored.

Colonialism. The enforced spread of the rule of reason. But who is going to spread it among the colonizers?

Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nothin' but what we see.

The dark ghettos are social, political, educational and-above all-economic colonies. Their inhabitants are subject peoples, victims of the greed, cruelty, insensitivity, guilt, and fear of their masters.

Those in the community who defy authority and 'break the law' seem to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material possessions. On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruthlessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked human lives.

The black man in America's position is parallel with that of the Jews, especially when the Jews were in bondage under Pharaoh. And at no time did Moses in the Bible ever try and integrate the Hebrews into the Egyptian society or accept any hypocritical offers made by the slave master of that day.

Oppression is as American as apple pie.

The same rebellion, the same impatience, the same anger that exists in the hearts of the dark people in Africa and Asia is existing in the hearts and minds of 20 million black people in this country who have been just as thoroughly colonized as the people in Africa and Asia.

The white man is going to keep you integration-minded Negroes cooped up here in America, and when you discover that the white man is a trickster, a devil, that he has no intentions of integrating, then you Negroes will run wild.