Drug Decriminalization in Maryland Through an African Centered Research Paradigm- Analysis and Recommendations

population is antisocial, sometimes a criminal, and lacks of sense of moral responsibility
for the health and wellbeing of others. This is how bio-Others come to have “disposable
bodies” as Karam (2014) has shown, and why their lives are at times “ungrievable” as
Butler (2009) would say. (ibid)
This text sets up a vital touchpoint in this analysis. Rail and Jette set a touchtone in isolating many
of the conceptual justification and technologies public health uses to launder racist, sexist, classist,
and ableist assumptions through a lens of benevolent intervention. By presenting populations with
the illusions of control and participation, Rail and Jette note that these populations are ultimately
made responsible for their suffering, as the public health interventions are engaged outside of the
context of more substantial structural change. Even under a seemingly culturally competent
approach, these strategies reduce culture down to abstractions and artifacts (dance, food, clothing).
It seeks to use culture in the context of a reductive, transactionalism vision of empowerment where
in exchange for proving productive bio-citizenship, the culture of oppressed people comes under
attack, and its origin recognition is erased. Even in the seemingly most benign “provisional” model
of public health interventions, where oppressed populations tell officials what they want and then,
ostensibly, get it, experts and lawmakers are still positioned as the power brokers and are
positioned to shape the contours of what interventions are “givable” or even “askable” in the
context of this engagement. One wonders what would happen if communities gathered and told
public health officials they wanted “reparations for the War on Drugs” or even “the banishment of
racist public health institutions from their neighborhoods” as part of these “empowerment”
sessions. Rail and Jette note that the goal of these sessions is often to round down visions of
sweeping political change to an idea of social repair, which creates healthy biocitizenship within
a racist, neoliberal framework. You can get fresh fruit at the corner store, but you can’t challenge
the political economy of neoliberalism, which forces you to buy fast food and cook quick meals to
get to your service economy job.
While Rail and Jette set up some useful analysis in critiquing the assumptive logic of public
health interventions, they should not be seen as necessarily representative of an African Centered
Research Paradigm. As Schiele notes, the African Centered Research Paradigm should not be
confused with a poststructuralist critique of power relations.While the Post Structuralists seek to
name and call out power and engage in “archeological” analysis of the historical complexity and
contingency of so-called “objective” truth claims to point out how they seek to reify power and
constrain individual freedom, the African Centered Research Paradigm aims to see the world
through a communalist lens. Rather than merely identifying power to analyze how best to
undermine it, the African Centered Research Paradigm builds new institutions which manifest
visions of collective empowerment and freedom. For example, while equally critical of superficial
and “culturalist” interventions, an African Centered Research Paradigm would be sure to not
assume that just because a racist neoliberal view culture as an abstract force, that this should not
be continued as indicating all attempt to leverage the cultural resources of the community to
address a social problem. Moreover, while Rail and Jette attempt to adopt a comprehensive vision
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