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

Afro-centric social work research generates knowledge to enhance the potential of people
and societies to behave morally and in ways congruent with the belief in the oneness of the
universe and humanity.” (Schiele, 2000).
This is important to note, as the intellectual innovations created by people of African descent are
too often seen as iterative or reflective of some previously established European theorists or
thought traditions, rather than deserving respect as a wholly unique and distinct contribution to
research.
This raises the critical point that research should not only be evaluated by its specific
claims, but also through the ideological and rhetorical justifications used to justify these claims.
These claims have serious implications from the perspective of African Centered Research
paradigms, as they impact the underlying thought systems readers take away from the research.
From the standpoint of African Centered Research paradigms, this is essential, as it implicates the
heuristic value of the study if the justifications behind the findings undermine the emancipatory
values of the recommendations. For example, an analysis of drug policy might argue that addiction
should be treated as a public health issue because Black communities are incapable of producing
alternatives to the underground economy, and thus decriminalizing drugs should reflect a realistic
approach to contemporary urban poverty. This would be seen by many as positive, as it seeks to
address the material suffering caused by hyper incarceration and addiction. However, it would
ignore that Black communities are, of course, not incapable of producing alternatives to the
underground economy, but instead politically starved of the resources needed to create these
alternatives. This replicates the previously stated fallacy of taking existing information as
“objectively” true without understanding the social, historical, and structural conditions behind
these “facts.” It also fails to accomplish the stated role of challenging the underlying assumptive
logic behind these systems of inequity, which, in this example, would be to focus on the underlying
conditions leading to addiction in under-resourced black communities and to study the positive,
productive capacities of individuals who use selling illegal drugs as a means of survival and
economic empowerment. Importantly, this does not mean that any of the negative social impacts
of addiction or violence stemming from the drug trade is ignored. Rather it suggests that the
research around drug decriminalization takes these issues into account from the lens of using the
history and culture of the people impacted by these issues into account both in terms of explaining
these issues and offering recommendations for how to address them.
This example helps show how these paradigmatic considerations are not merely questions
of fairness, but strong influences on the sorts of questions that researchers ask, the methods they
use, and the conclusion they come to. Using Akabr’s African American Research Paradigm, this
section could be seen as theoretical research and deconstructive research at a meta-level, seeking
to analyze many of the characteristics of the dominant research paradigm, expose their limitations,
present alternative research paradigms and provide examples of how they may be applied. The
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