Steven Biko Quotes

The Southern Negro is not an incurably ignorant ape. The Southern white masses are not biologically degenerate.

We are not anti-white. But we don't have time for the white man. The white man is on top already, the white man is the boss already... he has first-class citizenship already. So you are wasting your time talking to the white man. We are working on our own people.

Until racial justice and freedom is a reality in this land, our union will remain profoundly imperfect.... The Negro is going to get justice or this society will be ripped apart.

The supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards, because the white race is the superior race... This declaration shall run forever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon hearts

In '42,' it's like the '40s where racial equality had come into the consciousness of a lot of people, whereas in the 1900s it was sort of a new thing.

The greatest problem is not with flat-out white racists, but rather with the far larger number of Americans who believe intellectually in racial equality but are quietly oblivious to injustice around them.

We've begun to put fear into those whites who think they can do anything they want to a black person and get away with it.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

If white America is ready to extend complete democratic rights to colored people, there will be no race, no racial tension and no racial prejudice on either side, but we can be sure that any movement 'back to normalcy' in race relations will be bitterly resisted by colored people. It is now up to white America to make its choice...

Many white Americans resist relinquishing the sense of entitlement skin color has given them throughout our national history.

The white man believes in equality, but apparently believes the white man is more equal than the Indian.

I believe the time has come for equal rights for everyone in this country, even for white people.

We're not so much anti-black as we are pro-white.

There's not a white man in this country who can say he never benefited from being white.

The colored people should not urge that they be placed on an equality with white people.

The black herring of intermarriage has been dragged too often across the trail to justice. 'Would you want your sister to marry a nigger?' is still the question that is supposed to stun any white man who sponsors rights for Negroes. It stirs Negroes to ironic laughter, although on all levels they recognize the white man's fear of intermarriage as deep seated…

The American demands of the Negro are there, made in the American manner, rooted in the American ideal. They are not to be brushed aside, and something more than fulmination and bluster is indicated from the opposition. The next move is up to white Americans, and particularly white Southern Americans.

What whites cannot experience and may never understand is that no matter which side of the bed I chose to wake up on, I would still be a black man in the racially divisive America.

Some people resented the fact I was trying to break a white man's record.

I think the most harmful belief passed on to me - not always directly - was the belief that whatever I did as a Negro, however much we Negroes achieved, despite the presence of some enlightened whites, white society as a whole enjoyed being racists in the secret core of their being and would never, ever give that up.

If you're into social justice it's hard not to be on black people's side.

Electing the first African-American president was a tremendous accomplishment, but it hasn't erased racism.

White consciousness is deeply anti-black, and that's for progressives and conservatives.

It's much easier to talk about racism when you're able to use mutants as a metaphor. People would much rather talk about Charles Xavier and Magneto than they would about Martin Luther King or Malcolm X.

We were taught in school that there was a fundamental difference between black people and white people - that we were superior.