How can a foucauldian genealogical method be utilized as the framework to analyze marijuana rhetoric in the 1930's and its disproportionate impact on the African American community?

 

The Foucauldian genealogical method can be used to analyze the marijuana rhetoric and its disproportionate impact on the African American community by looking into the geographies and histories of the institutions which were involved at the time, and questioning the official accounts which were held, their effects and how these accounts limited the position of African Americans in society.

Step-by-step explanation

The genealogical method will displace the primacy of the Marijuana rhetoric in the 1930s, by looking into the discourse, certainty, rationality and reason behind the story as it was presented. It seeks to destabilize the categories which appear natural as constructs and the confines which are articulated by discourse and words so as to unlock new possibilities for interpretations that best explain the disproportional impact that marijuana had on African Americans.

To gain some context, let us delve into the marijuana rhetoric as it was in the 1930s. During the 1930s, a film known as "Reefer Madness" was aired and it placed parents across the US in panic as it depicted and suggested the presence of evil dealers of marijuana in public schools that enticed children to a life of degeneracy and crime. This propaganda film contributed to Harry Anslinger's (an employee in government) campaign of demonizing marijuana being a dangerous drug. Anslinger used the racist attitudes of the white Americans together with the fears that loomed that stoked the drug as being destructive to the youth as the leverage for his anti-marijuana campaign.

The genealogical method would seek to unravel the particular details of the propaganda that was being peddled in the anti-marijuana campaign. It would look into the history of racism in America, and Anslinger's main motives through his adamant anti-marijuana campaign. The genealogical method would describe how the African Americans ended up being most affected by the marijuana rhetoric, since racist attitudes by the white Americans were being used against blacks and Hispanics who would be stigmatized for using the drug. The outcome of the genealogical analysis would be that the marijuana rhetoric in the 1930s was, in real sense, a combination of racist beliefs and the fears growing out of the uncertainties of the effects of marijuana to the human body during that time.