I Write What I Like

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1978

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-19

Key Figures

Themes

Index of Terms

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “The Church as Seen by a Young Layman”

Chapter 10 is a paper Biko gave at the 1972 Conference of Black Ministers of Religion at the Ecumenical Lay Training Center in Natal. Biko argues that religion is a social institution that cannot be divorced from broader culture. To be successful, religion must be flexible and convey relevant messages to varied populations. Although Christianity is an adaptable religion, a rigid form was exported to South Africa. Central to the culture of the colonizers, Christianity divided Africans into converts and pagans, resulting in conflict.

Biko is critical of contemporary Christianity in South Africa. Instead of focusing on racial injustice, oppression, intolerance, and cruelty, the church promotes definitions of sin that encourage self-blame. Ministers call out Black criminality, laziness, and lasciviousness without acknowledging that they are manifestations of a racist system. The church is not an expression of religiosity, but a bureaucratically bloated institution controlled by white people. The church does not prioritize the interests of Black people, but instead focuses on dogma and promotes the idea that whiteness is more valuable than Blackness.

Biko urges Black ministers to unite and transform Christianity by caucusing and putting Black people in positions of power. He also promotes Black Theology, an institutional interpretation of Christianity that connects Black people to God, addresses Black people’s current concerns, and ceases promoting the idea of peaceful suffering. Transforming the church requires action from the ministry, not divine intervention.

Chapter 11 Summary: “White Racism and Black Consciousness”

Chapter 11 is a paper from a 1971 conference at the Abe Bailey Institute for Inter-racial Studies in Cape Town. It focuses on the growing gap between white and Black South Africans. Biko calls out the destructive impact of white racism, while encouraging Black people to reject false government promises and join forces against apartheid. He cites the harassment of Black people by police and the unequal application of laws as evidence of power imbalance in South Africa. The platforms of two of the country’s political parties, the Nationalist Party and the United Party, underscore racial inequity. Indeed, the latter’s slogan, “white supremacy over the whole of South Africa” (63), explicitly promotes white racism. Even the Progressive Party, which initially appealed to Black people, preserves white values.

Chapter 11 revisits the problems with liberalism outlined in Chapter 5, namely, its insistence on maintaining the status quo and its opposition to groups that organize along racial lines, including SASO. Biko argues that the integration liberals envision is impossible to achieve in South Africa because the gulf between Black and white people is too large. The entire system must be changed. Biko claims that guilt drives liberals, not genuine concern for the welfare of Black people. Furthermore, he criticizes liberals for failing to address the source of white supremacy, namely, white people. Biko does not blame liberals for the plight of Black people. Rather, he seeks to demonstrate that the unequal system of apartheid prevents white people from fully identifying with the oppressed.

Biko’s understanding of political power in South Africa informs his thinking on Black Consciousness. Biko promotes non-involvement with the white world. Despite charges of radicalism, he insists on the complete separation of SASO and white student organizations. However, Black Consciousness is not simply a reactionary rejection of whiteness. Rather, it focuses on fostering group power and group pride to improve the plight of Black people. Black Consciousness requires doing away with the negative values white people assign to Blackness. It is, in part, an inward-looking process.

Hindering Black Consciousness are Black-white dependency, the racist social, economic, and political structures of the colonial past, and anti-Black values promoted by the government, schools, and the church. Black Consciousness requires seeing South African culture as it is currently, not as it was before Europeans arrived in 1652. It requires lauding the heroes who resisted the white invaders. Further, it requires restoring traditional African values, notably, the emphasis on human relationships. Black Consciousness is not about hemming in Black people or closing off their world. Rather, it is about developing a positive outlook of Blackness, one that combats centuries of oppression.

Chapter 12 Summary: “Fear—An Important Determinant in South African Politics”

Chapter 12, an article from a 1971 SASO newsletter, focuses on the role of fear in South African society. Biko lists three types of fear: 1) white people’s fear of Black people; 2) Black people’s fear of white people; and 3) the government’s fear of Black people and desire to assuage the fears of white people.

Focusing on Black people’s fears, Biko begins with a discussion of the government’s history of violence and cruelty. European settlers used force to cow South Africans and install themselves as perpetual rulers of the land. The current government maintains its power through intimidation, arrest, imprisonment, and cruelty. For example, Black activists face police harassment, house arrest, and banning. The military, postal workers, and even farmers and store owners are also sources of intimidation, instilling fear in the Black population.

This fear, however, hides hatred and rage. At best, Black people see whiteness as an idea that must be destroyed and replaced. At worst, they envy whiteness for its advantages and seek to claim it for themselves. Biko argues that people are responsible for their government’s actions and that they have a responsibility to act against injustice. Thus, he holds all white people responsible for apartheid. Additionally, he maintains that Black people who participate in the system, either as police officers or special branch agents, are not truly Black, but pawns for white people.

Chapters 10-12 Analysis

Chapters 10-12 were written for three different occasions, each with a distinctive audience. Chapter 10 addresses Black Christian ministers at the Conference of Black Ministers of Religion at the Ecumenical Lay Training Center in Natal; Chapter 11 addresses academics at a conference hosted by the Abe Bailey Institute for Inter-racial Studies in Cape Town; and Chapter 12, an article from SASO’s newsletter, addresses members of Biko’s organization. Each chapter focuses on a different theme tailored to its particular audience.

Delivered to a group of Black ministers, Chapter 10 centers on the history of Christianity in South Africa, its current role as an instrument of oppression, and Biko’s hope for its future as a supporter of Black people. Biko argues that Christianity should stop focusing on sin and self-blame and instead empower Black people to stand up to racial injustice, intolerance, cruelty, and oppression, emphasizing The Importance of Pride and Black Consciousness. He urges Black ministers to transform Christianity and to cease promoting racist ideas about Blackness, arguing that the contemporary church reflects values passed down from colonial times:

Because the white missionary described black people as thieves, lazy, sex-hungry etc., and because he equated all that was valuable with whiteness, our Churches through our ministers see all these vices I have mentioned above not as manifestations of the cruelty and injustice which we are subjected to by the white man but inevitable proof that after all the white man was right when he described us as savages (57).

Biko uses analogies to convey the negative impact of Christianity on Black people:

In a country where all black people are made to feel the unwanted stepchildren of a God whose presence they cannot feel […] the Church further adds to their insecurity by its inward-directed definition of the concept of sin and its encouragement of the ‘mea culpa’ attitude (56).

Biko asks Black ministers to transform the church with Black Theology, an interpretation of Christianity that foregrounds the concerns of Black people.

The topic of Christianity is less immediately relevant to the academic audience at the Abe Bailey Institute for Inter-racial Studies in Cape Town, addressed in Chapter 11. At this conference, Biko emphasized the entwined issues of white racism and Black Consciousness. Biko argued that Black Consciousness was a necessary response to South Africa’s apartheid system. Black Consciousness promotes non-involvement with the white world, Black pride, The Role of Solidarity, and Black power. Moreover, it is an inward-looking process that aims to change the way Black people see themselves, which reflects centuries of oppression.

Using direct and strong language, Biko presents Black Consciousness as an alternative to white liberalism, which allows white people to ease their guilt while maintaining the status quo:

The myth of integration as propounded under the banner of the liberal ideology must be cracked and killed because it makes people believe that something is being done when in reality the artificially integrated circles are a soporific to the blacks while salving the consciences of the guilt-sticken [sic] white. It works from the false premise that, because it is difficult to bring people from different races together in this country, achievement of this is in itself a step towards the total liberation of the blacks. Nothing could be more misleading (64).

Chapter 12, an article in SASO’s newsletter, addresses members of Biko’s organization and thus has a different emphasis. Biko discusses Black fear with people who have experienced that fear. He traces the origins of Black fear to 1652, when Europeans arrived in South Africa, discusses the South African government’s history of violence, and links this history to current practices, namely, the government’s use of intimidation, arrest, imprisonment, and cruelty to maintain power.

Biko captures the uncertainty that characterizes Black people’s lives and presumably affects all of SASO’s members:

No average black man can ever at any moment be absolutely sure that he is not breaking a law. There are so many laws governing the lives and behavior of black people that sometimes one feels that the police only need to page at random through their statute book to be able to get a law under which to charge a victim (75).

Biko also discusses how fear has altered Black behavior, another issue his Black readers would have understood: “It is a fear so basic in the considered actions of black people as to make it impossible for them to behave like people—let alone free people” (76).

Chapters 10-12 address different themes, but they are linked by ideas of The Importance of Pride and Black Consciousness. Chapter 10 calls on the church to focus on problems facing Black communities; Chapter 11 presents Black Consciousness as a means of unifying, uplifting, and empowering Black people; and Chapter 12 identifies the roots of Black fear and presents it as a problem Black people must overcome.

Biko’s direct style and evocative comparisons run as throughlines in his writings, regardless of his audience. For example, he mentions the Nuremburg trials in Chapter 12, indirectly linking white South Africans to the Nazis: “The very fact that those disgruntled whites remain to enjoy the fruits of the system would alone be enough to condemn them at Nuremburg” (77). His characterization of Black police officers as enemies in the same chapter equates cooperation with the system with capitulation to its injustices: “These are colourless white lackeys who live in a marginal world of unhappiness. They are extensions of the enemy into our ranks” (78).

Liberals are also on the receiving end of Biko’s harsh words, as evidenced by several passages in Chapter 11: “Who are the liberals in South Africa? It is that curious bunch of non-conformists who explain their participation in negative terms; that bunch of do-gooders that goes under all sorts of names—liberals, leftists, etc.” (63). Similarly, he describes Black clerics as “stern-faced ministers [who] stand on pulpits every Sunday to heap loads of blame on black people in townships” (57). Through direct and at times unvarnished prose, Biko sought to empower Black people, while pointing out obstacles, both external and internal, to their emancipation.