Knowing the Truth, Seeing the Truth but still Believing the Lies
White consciousness
should have the following aims:
·
To
crystallise the needs and aspirations of the whites and to make known their
grievances.
·
Where
possible to put into effect programs designed to meet the needs of whites and
to act on a collective basis in an effort to solve some of the problems which
beset them.
·
To
heighten the degree of contact not only amongst the white but also amongst
these and the rest of the South African population to make the whites accepted
on their own terms as an integral part of the South African community.
·
To establish
a solid identity amongst whites and to ensure that they are always treated with
the dignity and respect they deserve.
·
To boost
up the morale of the whites to heighten their own confidence in themselves and
to contribute largely to the direction of thought taken by various institutions
on social, political and other current topics.
While these aims might
appear to be couched in radicalistic language, they are in fact a sign that the
white community has at last lost faith with their black counterparts and is now
withdrawing from the open society. The
whites are tired of standing at the touchlines to witness a game that they
should be playing. They want to do
things for themselves and all by themselves.
A time has come when
whites have to formulate their own thinking, unpolluted by ideas emanating from
a group with lots at stake in the status quo.
It is difficult not to look at black society as a group of people bent
on perpetuating that status quo. All
suffer from the same fault basically of accepting as a fact that there shall be
black leadership and even worse, that they shall occupy themselves
predominantly with problems affecting black society first. We need to adopt the principle that whites
should work themselves into a powerful group so as to go forth and stake their
rightful claim in the open society rather than to exercise that power in some
obscure part of the Kalahari.
It is a painful waste
of time to engage in any dialogue with racially-bigoted organisations. Hence, this belies the belief that our
withdrawal is an end in itself.
(Written by Steve Biko
in 1970. I only inserted the word “white’
where he had written ‘black’. But so apt for where we find ourselves today – a group
with no identity)
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