A rebuttal of Biko’s black Consciousness

What then is Black Consciousness? What should we read of Biko’s intellectual alienation of himself from the black man? Given “the impossibility of explaining man outside the limits of his capacity for accepting or denying a given situation”, that our psychological framework is governed by our living conditions from birth not the greatness or lack-of of our great grandfathers, can we really accuse any black person of not being Black Conscious?

September is the important month in the South African calendar, we commemorate the death of the father of the Black Consciousness Movement, Steven Bantu Biko. We, South Africans, hardly agree on anything especially on politics but we seem to be willing to put our differences aside when it comes to celebrating Mandela and Biko.

Despite my discomfort with some of Biko’s quotes such as “Black is not a matter of pigmentation but mental attitude”, “Black Power”, “Black is beautiful” and “the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed”, I have always associated myself with his black consciousness ideology.

I always asked, what mental attitude, what black power, what beauty, was the colonization of black people an upshot of a psychological warfare from which the superior white logic prevailed against the inferior black logic?

Nevertheless, I never felt the need to read his “I write what I like”. I reasoned that intellectuals like Biko like to complicate things for us simple minds just like the one Isaac Newton who decided to complicate a simple process of an apple falling from the tree with his gravitational force theory. Thank God, Newton won the science battle, we won the war. We still call that process “the falling of an apple” not the attraction of the apple by the gravitational force.

Likewise, I reasoned, black consciousness should be obvious to every black soul born in the 70’s or earlier in South Africa and Biko was theorizing a simple issue well understood.

The fact that “Bikoists”, “black radicals” and “woke” black twitter often annoy me with their constant insults of black people as petty stupid souls who are yearning to be white never rang any alarm bells - that my understanding of black consciousness might be far from Black Consciousness of Biko. I was convinced this attitude was a result of overzealous disciples who misinterpret and misrepresent their hero, Biko. The Black Consciousness Movement of Biko could not have been conceived on the back of insulting the intelligence of black people.

As September drew to an end, I was about to congratulate myself for successfully avoiding articles that insulted the intelligence of black people in the name of Biko’s Black Consciousness. Then social media became the undoing. Eusebious Mckaiser of Radio 702 retweeted a tweet by one Lewis Gordon stating “#BlackExistentialism: Not all blacks are Blacks”. This tweet sent my head spinning. I responded angrily that the tweet was nonsense. But a small voice whispered, what if the tweet is right. I immediately deleted my angry response.

I needed answers, fast. Biko’s “I write what I like” was the obvious hunting ground for answers. After all, Biko is considered the father of Black Consciousness. So I started my long overdue journey.

It didn’t take too much reading before my long held view of associating myself with Biko’s black consciousness came crumbling down. The DNA link between the Bikoists and Biko himself became apparent. Both find the black man complicit in the colonial crimes the white man committed against him - and his inferior logic and culture the main cause thereof.

I posit Biko unconsciously believed the white man to be intellectually superior to the black man. Biko assumed the outcomes of the colonial project as he observed them reflected the meticulous plan of the white man. The white man was always ahead of the curve, the outcomes always reflected his plan in totality irrespective of the resistance put up by the black man. The concessions made by the white man through-out the history of colonialism were cunning, designed to deceive the unsuspecting black man. All the twists and turns of the colonial project always entirely reflected the forward planning of the white man.

Fast forward then to the current political debate around the 1994 negotiations. If you listen to Bikoists, black radicals and “woke” black twitter you will find the white man presented as meticulous in planning and negotiating, and the black man as gullible and naïve. They argue that Mandela and his comrades were outmaneuvered and outplayed in CODESA negotiations. The outcome observed today, which appears to be in favour of the white man at least economically, is not a fluke but the result of the meticulous foresight of the white man. They assume the white man was readily willing to give the black man political power, that the white man crafted the new constitution so that it favoured him. Even the inclusion of fair discrimination (affirmative action) in the constitution was a calculated move of the white man. In a nutshell, the black man won nothing, the white man was ahead of the curve, once again making a fool out of the black man.

Like Biko, his disciples use what I call the “backward extrapolation of the present” in reading and analyzing the past. The Bikoists unconsciously believe in the superior logic of the white man in relation to the black man. Therefore given that the South African economy still reflects the colonial structure of the past, they reason the white man must have known during the CODESA negotiations that the new democratic dispensation would favour them economically despite all the concessions made by both sides, i.e. the inclusion of affirmative action and land redistribution in the constitution.

In his book Biko’s psychoanalysis of the black man is proof that he himself could have been unconsciously convinced of the superior logic of the White man in relation to the Black man. As Fanon explains the impact of colonial social structure (that condemns the black man as filthy, evil and inferior) to the psychological framework of the black man, Biko might have believed that he transcended the natural inferior logic state of the black man and ascended to the superior logic of the “other” and therefore unconsciously considered himself as the “Other”. Otherwise, how else he could have made the following conclusions about the black man:

“What makes the black man fail to tick? Is he convinced of his own accord of his inabilities? Does he lack in his genetic make-up that rare quality that makes a man willing to die for the realisation of his aspirations? Or is he simply a defeated person? The answer to this is not a clearcut one. It is, however, nearer to the last suggestion than anything else”.

…..The first step therefore is to make the black man come to himself; to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity, to remind him of his complicity in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth. This is what we mean by an inward-looking process. This is the definition of Black Consciousness”.

Biko comparing the African culture with that of the white man and his fatal twist of the logical sequence of events that lead to the colonization of the black man:

… “The two major cultures that met and "fused" were the African Culture and the AngloBoer Culture. Whereas the African culture was unsophisticated and simple, the Anglo-Boer culture had all the trappings of a colonialist culture and therefore was heavily equipped for conquest. Where they could, they conquered by persuasion, using a highly exclusive religion that denounced all other Gods and demanded a strict code of behaviour with respect to clothing, education ritual and custom. Where it was impossible to convert, fire-arms were readily available and used to advantage.

It is ahistorical to suggest that the white man, on his arrival in the African sea shores, waged a psychological warfare against the locals and only used violence as a backup.

Biko on science:

Whereas the Westerner is geared to use a problem-solving approach following very trenchant analyses, our approach is that of situation-experiencing. Africans being a pre-scientific people do not recognise any conceptual cleavage between the natural and supernatural. They experience a situation rather than face a problem.

How Biko couldn’t connect the cause of the “defeated black man” he observed with the living experience of being black in a brutal colonial social structure that condemned the black man as dirty, evil, uncultured and sub-human is unexplainable.

It appears Biko’s Black Consciousness was conceived on a twisted causality logic where he finds the black man’s inferiority complex as the main cause for his colonization hence he thought that he needed “to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity”.

In his book, “Black skin, white mask”, Frantz Fanon observed the same “defeated Black man” that Biko observed in his era. The black man observed by Fanon however was conscious of what the black man represents in the white world, dirty, evil uncultured and subhuman. Consequently, in his quest to escape himself, the black man often slips into the unconscious condition of wanting to become the white man.

Having accepted as fact the proposition of “the impossibility of explaining man outside the limits of his capacity for accepting or denying a given situation”, which Biko clearly ignored in his psychoanalysis of the black man he observed, Fanon explains the deep unconscious desire of the black man to be white as follows:

“If he is overwhelmed to such a degree by the wish to be white, it is because he lives in a society that makes his inferiority complex possible, in a society that derives its stability from the perpetuation of this complex, in a society that proclaims the superiority of one race; to the identical degree to which that society creates difficulties for him, he will find himself thrust into a neurotic situation”.

Unlike Biko who finds the black man “complicit in the crime of allowing himself to be misused and therefore letting evil reign supreme in the country of his birth”, his inferiority complex as the main culprit that requires artificial intervention (to pump back life into his empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity) and called this intervention “Black Consciousness”, Fanon contends “The feeling of inferiority of the colonized is the correlative to the European’s feeling of superiority. Let us have the courage to say it outright: It is the racist who creates his inferior”.

To overcome the black man’s wish to be white, Fanon proposes that the black man need to “become conscious of his unconscious and abandon his attempts at a hallucinatory whitening, but also to act in the direction of a change in the social structure”.

Importantly, Fanon understands that the colonial social structure need to change for any hope of the black man to successfully stay conscious of his unconscious. Without this, the black man will often find himself deep in the unconscious like a seasoned swimmer who often finds himself underwater struggling against the heavy tides of the oceans.

What then is Black Consciousness? Given “the impossibility of explaining man outside the limits of his capacity for accepting or denying a given situation”, that our psychological framework is governed by our living conditions from birth not the greatness or lack- of our great grandfathers, can we really accuse any black person of not being Black Conscious?

What should we read of Biko’s apparent intellectual alienation of himself from the black man he observed as defeated, the man he suspected of possessing a genetic deficiency that makes him lack the rare quality that makes a man to be willing to die for the realization of his aspirations. His ability to insult the black as unsophisticated and gullible.

Could it be that Biko himself was suffering from the unconscious of seeing himself as the “Other” hence he was able to insult the black man? While he hated the cruelty of white supremacy, could it be that he unconsciously believed and admired it? When he wanted to pump back life into the black man’s empty shell; to infuse him with pride and dignity; he actually wanted to transform the black man to become the “Other”, the white man who is full of pride and dignity, who is endowed with the right genetic make-up that makes him willing to die for the realization of his aspiration?

Unfortunately, Fanon is no longer around to answer these questions. However, Biko, at least, gave us tools to psychologically cope with the heavy currents of colonial social structure that often make us to slip into the unconscious wish of becoming white. Today, “woke” blacks can shout black power, black excellence, black is beautiful…, able to say aloud the very opposite of what they experience, believe and know.

Until we completely destroy colonial social structure in South Africa, it would be unfair and unrealistic to ask for black people to imagine and engrain in their subconscious a black reality they never experienced. The best we can do is to be black conscious of our current black reality, to be aware of its psychological impact and accept that, like the experienced swimmer who often finds himself underwater struggling against the heavy currents of the ocean, all of “us” will often slip into the unconscious of wanting to be the “Other” not because we have a genetic deficiency but because we are only human beings whose psychological framework is shaped by the living conditions.

In the meantime, blacks must commit to the struggle of staying conscious of the unconscious wish of being the “Other” and act in the direction of a change in the colonial social structure.

References

Frantz, Fanon. (1952). Black Skin, White mask. Editions de Seuil. France.

Stubbs, Aelred. (fl. 1978). I Write What I Like: Steve Biko. A selection of his writing. Oxford. London.