Steven BikoThinkers

Black consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life, the most positive call to emanate from the black world for a long time.

Black consciousness is an attitude of the mind and a way of life.

Black consciousness is at its essence the realization by the black man of the need to rally together with his brothers around the cause of their oppression the blackness of their skin and to operate as a group to rid themselves of the shackles that bind them to perpetual servitude.

Black consciousness is directed at the past and seeks to rewrite the history of the black man and to produce in it the heroes who form the core of the african background.

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.

Black consciousness seeks to produce real black people who do not regard themselves as appendages to white society, who see that they too are people.

Black consciousness's basic tenant 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.

Blackness is not a matter of pigmentation but a reflection of a mental attitude.

Blackness's central theme is: 'defeated society'.

Blackness is first to be recognized. To recognize oneself as black is to start on a road towards emancipation, to commit oneself to fight against all forces that seek to use one's blackness as a stamp that marks one out as a subservient being.