Understanding Steve Biko: Race, Class and Struggle in South Africa – an interview with Mosa Phadi

Black consciousness is an idea that works best in a racist white-supremacy capitalist setting. However, its interpretation today is very neo-liberal. You hear talk of ‘black excellence’ for instance, there’s nothing wrong with that per se, but it is a concept tied to a neo-liberal framing that focuses on the individual. Such an approach will not help break with the system, but rather perpetuates inequalities, as capital by nature produces these inequalities. If you view yourself as an individual focused on achieving ‘black excellence’ forgetting about structures which produce inequalities, then you are not helping solve the problem. If such views prevail, then a few successful individual blacks will be put on a pedestal by black people as symbols of black excellence and black power while a system perpetuating inequalities continues to produce mass poverty.

(Click on the link below)

Understanding Steve Biko: Race, Class and Struggle in South Africa