This chapter focuses on the dramatic change affected by the South African anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko. The apartheid regime had used racial labeling to divide Indian, African, and mixed communities, preventing them from seeing their shared interests. Rather than reading Biko as a secular militant in the black power tradition, this chapter argues that Biko is best understood as rejecting a pragmatic, secularist understanding of politics. Through a seemingly simple practice of re-labeling, grouping all non-whites under the label black, Biko was able to transform not only political language but also political practice and ultimately political possibilities. This transformation is best understood in theological terms, as revelation that solicits fidelity; understood thusly, whiteness is identified with heresy. The chapter concludes by comparing Biko’s work of revelation with the reactionary, secularist racial labeling in the United States context, where words are tied increasingly tightly to worldly referents (“Negro” to “black” to “African American”).
