The Black Panther Party

For a decolonial pedagogy in the English Language teaching

Abstract

The current study reports the reflections and the experiences lived during The Black Panther Party Project. This project was developed at Colégio Estadual do Campo de Serra Grande, in the municipality of Uruçuca, from July to October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic period. The pandemic exacerbated social and racial inequality in the country fueled by the murder of George Floyd in the United States and the police violence which broke records in the same year and targeted mainly young black men. The impact of these events was followed by fierce demonstrations and a strong critique of racism. The consideration of these events in conjunction with students disengaged from the teaching-learning process has engendered a pedagogic proposal that would engage disparate students by addressing ethnic-racial relationship issues in dialogue with the English language. The possibilities of an insurgent, emancipatory and critical pedagogy would be realized by study of The Black Panther Party legacy, with the objective of deconstructing deeply rooted and entrenched Eurocentric epistemologies, revealed in the teaching-learning process of the English language.  Studying, analyzing and recognizing the memory of resistance presented by this American movement would also provide relevant knowledge coordinated with the teaching of English language.  Attentive and deliberate consideration of the BPP would demonstrate a black cultural self-determinative social movement, which arose from African American demands for a better quality of life, the reduction of economic inequality, the elimination of racial and police violence, and the struggle of this disadvantaged population to organize itself for social justice, as well as economic and political transformation. Thus, this work proposes to discuss the black body in opposition to racialized discourses; a body in which lays an alternative discourse; and, a body that, in the exhumation of memory, negates processes of silencing, resistance and revolts, which occupy the dominant historical narrative.