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

Scholars of the history of African culture have analyzed this dynamic for decades. One of the
most insightful theorists of why historical violence towards people of African descent relates to
their current vulnerability to violent death is former City University of New York professor Amos
Wilson. In his seminal work titled “Black-on-Black Violence: The Psychodynamics of Black Self-
Annihilation in Service of White Domination”, Wilson makes the argument that individuals in the
Black community that commit homicide should be viewed as the externalization of a suicidal
impulse, writing:
“The rites of passage through racist White American-dominated society is extremely
stressful for Black youth. This is more so the case for the Black male since he receives the
bnint of the White supremacist attack against Black America. Stripped of appropriate male
support, guidance, protection, education, and other important coping skills by a White
racist system which fears his Afrocentric competence, he is lefi vulnerable to the thousands
of little nicks and burns, physical and psychological insults, which cumulatively push him
toward self-annihilation. Not allowed the privileges and status of full and unfettered
manhood by White racist male domination, a significant number of African American males
are miniaturized or are often led to express their “manhood” in self-destructive ways: in
ways harmful to other Black males and the Black community in general. Immaturized by
White racist oppression, void of overarching and long-term Afrocentric goals which
provide them with maximum and healthy control over their impulses (including impulses
to kill themselves) they may commit suicide. Without Afrocentric self-definition, possessed
by an introjected alien identity, and racked by neurotic and psychotic conflict, the Black
male readily becomes subject to White racist psychopolitical, psychopathological
promptings and persecutions. Consequently, he may come to think that the only efi‘ecfive
solution to his problems lie in physical or mental self-abnegation.
To be an African American male in White America is to live with anger and hostility, to
feel the need to attack, to violently retaliate, to even the score. These murderous feelings
without appropriate catharsis, sublimation, channeling, or targets yet in need of outward
expression are often turned inward resulting in self-annihilation. White racist American
society, harboring a poorly concealed death-wish against its Black captives, generally
leaves but a few outlets for the release of societally provoked Black male rage: all
inappropriate! They include the abject submission to oppression, narcosis by drugs or
religion, deliberate ignorance, unending, unrewarding protests, futile sub rosa grumbling,
over- compensatory status striving, criminality, and homicidal attacks on other Black
males or on himself suicide). Having internalized white racist values and attitudes, having
been possessed by his introjected white racist demon, the suicidal African American blames
his victimized self. Identified with his implanted alien spirit, he harbors a death-wish
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