The Black Panther Party: a Virtuous Alignment with an African Worldview

This work will locate the Black Panther Party as resistance against the final vocabulary as articulated by philosopher Richard Rorty (1989) in his book, Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, on two fronts. The first front is a re-articulation of his idea of the final vocabulary, and the second front is the language of resistance and discursive interventions put forth by the Black Panther Party. This paper will explore the actions of the Black Panther Party and its relationship to an African-Centered communal orientation in terms of its organizational activities and service/survival programs. Lastly, this research will explore the theoretical construction Afrocentricity to analyze the Black Panther Party's resistance role against the machinations of the state.