The 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.

中文翻译：

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毒品战争，种族意义和结构性种族主义：整体和生殖方法

美国的毒品战争已经成为针对低收入黑人和拉丁裔社区的社会控制系统的一部分。尽管该声明受到质疑，但从一个涵盖框架的框架中可以清楚地看出其有效性，该框架考虑了将毒品相关的社会问题和犯罪归咎于边缘化种族群体的白人中出于种族动机的法律和实践以及道德恐慌的历史。我们通过分析与毒品战争有关的种族含义和结构性种族主义，发展了一种全面而生殖的方法来理解种族压迫。为了揭示结构性种族主义，我们提出了一个框架，该框架涵盖了美国毒品政策与执法实践，种族化大规模监禁，资源分配以及种族压迫之间的关系。要检查种族意义，我们将通过对讨论毒品战争的报纸文章和数字媒体进行深入的内容分析得出结论。基于30多年的新闻内容-394篇文章，致编辑的信和新闻文章以及从在线新闻文章的评论部分中提取的3,145条评论-我们认为，刑事司法实践和通过媒体传播种族含义充当种族化的结构化机制。我们展示了这些机制如何协同工作，以加强和自然化种族群体与不平等社会地位之间的联系。我们发现了占主导地位的种族意义如何充当象征性资源，以维持诸如毒品战争之类的结构性种族主义形式。最后，我们讨论了这种方法的好处，并提出了相关且必要的未来研究和实践。