P46- As long as the oppressed remain unaware of the causes of their condition, they fatalistically "accept" their exploitation.

P33- Oppression is domesticating. Gravest obstacle to the achievement of liberation is that oppressive reality absorbs those within it and thereby acts to submerge human beings consciousness.

Radical or revolutionary consciousness . . . is the perception of oneself as unfree, as oppressed__nd finally it is the discovery of oneself as one of the oppressed who must unite to transform the objective conditions of their existence in order to resolve the contradiction between potentiality and actuality. Revolutionary consciousness leads to the struggle for one__ own freedom in unity with others who share the burden of oppression.

My old man's a white old manAnd my old mother's black.If ever I cursed my white old manI take my curses back.If ever I cursed my black old motherAnd wished she were in hell,I'm sorry for that evil wishAnd now i wish her wellMy old man died in a fine big houseMy Ma died in a shack.I wonder were i'm going to die,Being neither white nor black?

One would never defeat one's circumstances by working and saving one's pennies; one would never, by working, acquire that many pennies, and, besides, the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account. One needed a handle, a lever, a means of inspiring fear. It was absolutely clear that the police would whip you and take you in as long as they could get away with it, and that everyone else__ousewives, taxi-drivers, elevator boys, dishwashers, bartenders, lawyers, judges, doctors, and grocers__ould never, by the operation of any generous human feeling, cease to use you as an outlet for his frustrations and hostilities.

Notwithstanding the memories of slavery, and in the face poverty, ignorance, terrorism, and subjugation still deeply woven into their lives, the embittered past of blacks was taken onto a much higher plane of intellectual and artistic consideration during the Renaissance.