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The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic human dignity.

Steven Biko

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Steven Biko
Age: 30 †
Born: 1946
Born: December 18
Died: 1977
Died: September 12
Activist
Civil Rights Advocate
Politician
Trade Unionist
Writer
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Bantu Stephen Biko
Humans
Dignity
Tenet
Country
Seek
Foreigner
Birth
Foreigners
Must
Value
Reject
Make
Consciousness
Reduce
Men
Values
Rejects
Black
Systems
Human
Basic

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The logic behind white domination is to prepare the black man for the subservient role in this country.
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In all fields black consciousness seeks to talk to the black man in a language that is his own
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A people without a positive history is like a vehicle without an engine.
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To a large extent the evil-doers have succeeded in producing at the output end of their machine a kind of black man who is man only in form. This is the extent to which the process of dehumanization has advanced.
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Black Consciousness is in essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression.
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Part of the approach envisaged in bringing about Black Consciousness has to be directed to the past, to seek to rewrite the history of the black man and to produce in it the heroes who form the core of the African background
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The essence of politics is to direct oneself to the group which wields power
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It is better to die for an idea that will live, than to live for an idea that will die.
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Any warning normally implies, even if it is tacit, that there should be changes
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What Black Consciousness seeks to do is to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society. We do not need to apologise for this because it is true that the white systems have produced through the world a number of people who are not aware that they too are people.
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We are experiencing new problems every day and whatever we do adds to the richness of our cultural heritage as long as it has man as its centre
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I am against the fact that a settler minority should impose an entire system of values on an indigenous people.
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Merely by describing yourself as black you have started on a road towards emancipation, you have committed yourself to fight against all forces that seek to use your blackness as a stamp that marks you out as a subservient being.
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The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.
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I think the central theme about black society is that it has got elements of a defeated society
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Change the way people think and things will never be the same
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Being black is not a matter of pigmentation - being black is a reflection of a mental attitude.
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The system concedes nothing without demand, for it formulates its very method of operation on the basis that the ignorant will learn to know, the child will grow into an adult and therefore demands will begin to be made. It gears itself to resist demands in whatever way it sees fit.
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A community is easily divide when their perception of the same thing is different
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It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realize that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality.
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