you have to be careful not to fall into the anachronistic pitfalls of these things. contextualise your arguement within the present. black consciousness was a movement which gained its ground predominately in the '60s and '70s. by the '80s it was already under attack by some of our most revered intellectuals and writers (see: Njabulo S. Ndebele). these criticisms were not completely unwarranted and should be looked in to. anyway, it is now 2008. should the youth not draw from black consciousness and create something new instead of attempting to emulate it in a completely different circumstance? while i see the validity of your sentiments, your approach strikes me as somewhat counter-productive to what i think you're trying to achieve. taken to its extreme it's elitist, snobbish, and ageist. it suggests an all-knowing presence that should slap the wrists of the youth and put them in order, while not evaluating the situation holistically. counter-culture no longer exists without relation to the mainstream. so instead of attempting to extract the youth from participating in it (unlikely) it's better to encourage them to work within the mainstream and then, ultimately, traverse beyond it. what i mean is why not integrate intelligence within revolutionary chic? make reading texts as fashionable as printed t-shirts and dreadlocks. maintream culture offers a plethora of other 'sub-cultures'; you need to ask yourself the following: why of all of them, does a part of the youth fall into this "pseudo-revolutionary infatuation"? is there not smoke there which could, some day, and with the right nurtuting, lead to fire? the youth will always be captivated with the current (by the way, revolutionary chic has been on its way out for a while now) and the cool. otherwise the advertising industry would fall and even toddlers would stop wailing for sweets at supermarkets. there would be no short-hand national consciousness as we're seeing and hearing now on our tv's and radio's: a conglomeration of black colloquial: "yebo", "eish", "jozi", "kwetsa", "ma ten ten", "makoya" etc. lulling us into countless aisles to buy shit we don't need because it re-inforces our indentities as "south african". what i'm saying is that the advertising industry, especially for the youth, is more of a formidable and influential force than our government. you or i cannot do anything about that at the present moment. so instead of wagging fingers at the consequences, let us evaluate the cause and seek out ways to work within its confines. let us allow the youth to dabble on the surface of things, on the commodities. it is up to those who know to surreptiously plant things that will lead to illumination beneath the accessories.
on a side note, even you do not provide a full enough account of black consciouness to spur off your arguement. you present it as a ready-made, self-evident, ahistoric thing, supported by two quotes in sound-bite format. you are able to do this only because of commodification, and as a result you end up coming across like the very people you're putting under fire.
sorry if this sounds a bit glib. i'm mad tired, yo.
