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Abstract

The Black Panther Party and Transformative Pedagogy: Place-Based Education in Philadelphia, by Omari L. Dyson. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014, 214 pp. $85.00, hardback.Efforts to provide a remedy for the overwhelming ills suffered by inner city Black youths has formed the basis of Omari Dyson's The Black Panther Party and Transformative Pedagogy. Dyson has merged the two fields of study, education and post-colonial studies, to argue about the influence of the teaching philosophy of the Philadelphia Black Panther's political education classes and how it could socially transform the conditions of Black youth. In the book, he chronicles the social climate of 1960s North Philadelphia, how it impacted the Panther's teachings and social relief programs, and its demised caused by state repression.In the prologue and the first chapter, Dyson defines the current conditions of inner city Blacks as the aftermath of internal colonialism. Emerged in 1960s as a discourse among Black Power activists and intellectual scholars, internal colonialism labeled Blacks in America as colonial subjects, not second class citizens. To Dyson, U.S. society currently consists of a racial-class caste system. Institutional racism, not pathological behavior, is considered responsible for the escalation of an urban crisis upon Blacks. The lack of progressive public policies and economic shift to globalization has helped to escalate Black-on-Black crime, poverty, underemployment, and low self-esteem.The second chapter traces the antecedents of Black Nationalism and education in response to racism prior in antebellum era Philadelphia. Black churches and schools controlled by free blacks served as the example of Black self-determination and the center of Black education. Such institutions challenged Black inferiority, created positive self-esteem, and promoted Black independence.The third and fourth chapters' details urban inequality and how it influenced the formation of the Philadelphia Panthers. In conjunction with police brutality, Black residents experienced poor housing, Black-on-Black gang violence, lack of community services, and lack of no positive role models or Black teachers in public schools. Alongside the 1964 Philadelphia rebellion, the Black Power Movement and the anti-Vietnam war protest led to a revival of political consciousness and a redefinition of self. In 1968 in Mary Robbins Bookstore, the Panthers were created by Mumia AbuJamal (formerly Wesley Cook), Terry McHarris, and Reggie Schell. As an alternative to public education, it held political education classes, critiqued capitalism, taught global politics, and promoted Black self-esteem. Dyson contends the political classes consisted of three concepts: reading and dialogue for the purpose of problem solving; the concept of Huey P. …