Selfless revolutionaries

Interest in Black Consciousness has returned among a younger generation of readers. Global protests for social justice, sparked by the Black Lives Matter movement, have revived it, and COVID-19 showed how deeply rooted inequality runs through societies worldwide. Frantz Fanon, James Baldwin and Steve Biko are being read again. Allan Boesak, a Black liberation theologian and activist, examines how Black Consciousness and Black theology connect with the fight against racism, domination and imperial violence today.

Boesak rereads Steve Biko's I Write What I Like with care and precision, and at times he reaches conclusions that are unexpected. He considers what Black Consciousness contributes to current debates on decolonization and coloniality, on Africanity and imperialism, and to the struggles for freedom, justice and human dignity that take place in public streets. Drawing on his years of political work and theological study, he makes the case for a global ethic of solidarity and resistance against empire.

The book is organized as a sequence of arguments that begins with Biko's essay "Where do we go from here?", moves on to Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, and closes with Martin Luther King Jr.'s "There is no stopping short of victory."