ABSTRACT
While we now know the “what” in terms of media framing, we still need to understand the “why.” Why were uses of the “functionalist frame,” depicting the War on Drugs as a failure or cause of crime and drug abuse, so prevalent? Why were applications of the “racial unfairness frame,” especially those that related to sociological understandings of racial inequality, so rare? This chapter introduces several concepts and theories that explain this distribution of frames in the newspaper debates on the War on Drugs. We cannot understand public discussions about the War on Drugs without considering the following: (1) how Americans learn to think and feel about various racial groups; (2) how they define racism; and (3) how they recognize and account for ongoing racism and racial inequality in the United States. Toward that end, this chapter provides analysis and context for the trends and themes established in Chapter 3. It places the findings in conversation with the history of whiteness and racialization and concepts such as racial silence, resonance, and code words.
