Suchergebnisse

"This book traces how the history between race, drug policies, and the role of the media reflects dominant ideas about race, crime, politics. Through 30 years of newspaper reports and online commentary, Rosino shows how people form identities in a debate that heavily influences politics, public policies, and race relations"--

While the historical and ongoing symbolic and material inequalities and violence faced by African Americans can be understood as a human rights violation, the efficacy of the human rights framework for addressing racial injustice in the United States remains contested. In this article, I examine the relationship between the emergence and dominance of the geopolitical doctrine of human rights and the struggle for racial justice in the United States. Through historical, legal, and sociological analysis of relevant issues and cases, I discern the benefits and limitations of the human rights framework for achieving racial justice and elucidate dynamics between relevant institutional, political, and social actors. I argue that the human rights framework opens international pathways for information, accountability, and symbolic politics conducive to combating racial injustice, particularly regarding overt manifestations of oppression and violence, but enduring issues such as the role of the state in racial politics and the dehumanization of people of color present hindrances.

AbstractRecent sociological works establish the significance and role of the state and political sphere in the enactment of racial oppression and construction of racial categories. However, less understood are the racialized dynamics that mediate exclusion and access to political power, particularly at the meso‐ and micro‐levels. Synthesizing extant theory and research on racial inequality, the state, politics, and power, this article advances a framework centering on boundaries and barriers. First, it discusses the relationship between the state and political sphere, political power, and racial inequality. Next, it explores the literature on the deployment and contestation of racialized boundaries to the symbolic and material benefits of the state. It then examines the literature on racialized barriers to engagement, participation, and influence in the political sphere. The article concludes by suggesting future research in the related areas of agenda‐setting and influence and the microdynamics of political power.

The history of racial domination in the United States is multifaceted and therefore cannot be explained through simple reference to ideologies or institutional structures. At the microlevel, racial domination is reproduced through social interactions. In this article, I draw on Erving Goffman's dramaturgical approach to social interaction to illuminate the development of the racialized interaction order whereby actors racialized as white impose a set of implicit rules and underlying assumptions onto interracial interactions. I examine archetypal instances of racialized social interactions in America's history and present-day to reveal the role of social interactions in racially structuring social institutions and everyday lives. First, I discuss the development and racialization of chattel slavery and its routinization as an interaction order. Next, I explore the dramaturgical and symbolic significance of the postbellum emergence and spread of racial terrorism such as white lynch mobs. I then analyze the contemporary discursive and performative strategies of white racial dominance and aspects of the contemporary racialized interaction order such as the de facto racialization of spatial boundaries, mass media and the digital sphere, and police violence. I conclude by discussing the significance of interactional analysis for understanding the present racialized social system.

AbstractThe War on Drugs in the United States has been part of a system of social control targeting low‐income black and Latinx communities. While this statement has been contested, its validity is clear from an encompassing framework that considers the history of racially motivated laws and practices and moral panics among whites who have blamed drug‐related social problems and crime on marginalized racial groups. We develop a holistic and reproductive approach to understanding racial oppression by analyzing racial meanings and structural racism related to the War on Drugs. To uncover structural racism, we propose a framework that captures the relationship between drug policies and enforcement practices, racialized mass incarceration, the distribution of resources, and the reproduction of racial oppression in the United States. To examine racial meanings, we present findings from an in‐depth content analysis of newspaper articles and digital media discussing the War on Drugs. Based on over 30 years of news content—394 op‐eds, letters to the editor, and news articles and 3,145 comments drawn from the comments sections of online news articles—we argue that criminal justice practices and the distribution of racial meanings through the media act as racialized structuring mechanisms. We demonstrate how those mechanisms work in tandem to strengthen and naturalize the connection between racial groups and unequal social positions. We uncover how dominant racial meanings act as symbolic resources that maintain forms of structural racism such as the War on Drugs. Finally, we discuss the benefits of our approach and suggest relevant and necessary future research and practices.

As a set of criminal justice policies and practices, the "war on drugs" is a contested social issue linked to specific racial meanings and structures and political logics. As the legitimacy and value of the "war on drugs" has increasingly become a topic of public discussion, how such debates are shaped by both media communication and contemporary racial discourses warrants rigorous sociological analysis. In this article, we use a content analysis of newspaper manuscripts and online comments on "war on drugs" news stories to examine (1) the racial discourse within mass media agenda-setting and framing and (2) patterns of discursive identity construction in the context of digital and mass-mediated social commentary. Our findings show how "racial silence," implicit and explicit racial discourse, and identity construction via racialized subject-positions assist to rationalize and legitimate racial inequality. We also outline the theoretical implications of these findings and avenues of future research.

The term "microaggression" has experienced a lively existence in the field of psychology since its introduction in 1970s. Sociology has recently come to study microaggressions, yet serious gaps remain in the study of microaggressions. In particular, sociological analysis has not taken into account how exposure to microaggressive interactions may affect racial attitudes, how variations in microaggressive interactions have different effects, and what racial and gender positions render one more or less likely to engage in, or fail to oppose, microaggressions. Based on a GSS‐based survey and an experimental vignette design, we address the following two questions: First, how might the presence of racial microaggressions affect racial attitudes? Second, what is the power of specific types of interactional microaggression? Results indicate that both exposure to microaggressions and the type of microaggressions are correlated with changes in specific racial attitudes associated with the marginalization, problematization, and symbolic and physical repression of people of color.

How media propagates and challenges racismFrom Black Panther to #OscarsSoWhite, the concept of "race," and how it is represented in media, has continued to attract attention in the public eye. In Racialized Media, Matthew W. Hughey, Emma González-Lesser, and the contributors to this important new collection of original essays provide a blueprint to this new, ever-changing media landscape.With sweeping breadth, contributors examine a number of different mediums, including film, television, books, newspapers, social media, video games, and comics. Each chapter explores the impact of contemporary media on racial politics, culture, and meaning in society. Focusing on producers, gatekeepers, and consumers of media, this book offers an inside look at our media-saturated world, and the impact it has on our understanding of race, ethnicity, and more. Through an interdisciplinary lens, Racialized Media provides a much-needed look at the role of race and ethnicity in all phases of media production, distribution, and reception