Two years ago, I read "I Write What I Like" for the first time and it changed me. While reading the book, I got glimpses into his brilliance from when he was a student leader in university to him maturing causing his ideas to expand and change in some ways. It is a great read. If you have read Frantz Fanon, you will certainly enjoy Biko's writings.
When I read Biko, I was reminded of how important it is to seek truth and to ask the hard questions. As he once famously wrote, "the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." Our minds are so important, we have to guard them rather than be kept too dumb, drunk, drugged up, and distracted to question or to even realize what is happening. At one point Biko was banned, he was not allowed to speak publicly or publish any writing and people could not quote him. Nelson Mandela and others were also banned by the apartheid government at one point or another. That is a testament to the old saying, "thoughts become things." Biko wanted to empower black people by changing the way they viewed their blackness and their place in the world and then fight apartheid from this new perspective. He paid for that with his life.
The things that Biko and his contemporaries fought against have taken on new and different forms in 2013. We are constantly bombarded with images and messages (subtle or not) like: you are lesser, other, this or that is not for your kind, your kind is not capable of this or that. Too many of us walking around the world being apologetic for who we are, how dark our skin is, how our hair coils, how our tongue cannot wrap itself around some of those English words. Separating ourselves from our people, values, traditions; looking for legitimization and validation from another race because we have been othered, we've been made to feel we are different and that there is something wrong with that. It is this insecurity that keeps us in our "place"and that keeps us playing small.
The unconscious person is ever so grateful for the inch that the master gives when really they could have worked and gotten a mile had they been given a fair chance -- but they don't see that.
Wake up.
Steve Biko was a great mind and a compelling leader taken from the world much too soon.
Stephen Bantu Biko
18 December 1946 - 12 September 1977
This post is everything!!! I loved learning about Stephen Biko in college and regret that I haven't read more of his works. He is/was truly inspiring.
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