Colorblind and Callous Critiques: Racial Discourse and Identity Construction in Debates on the War on Drugs

• In Event: 326 - Regular Session. National Perspectives on Racism and Anti-Racism

Abstract

The emergence of the phrase “war on drugs” presents a significant rearticulation of previous discursive strategies aimed at legitimating and contesting particular state criminal justice practices. However, its conceptual association with military combat does not fully articulate that the policies, discourses, and practices described by the phrase “war on drugs” are not only militarized but also deeply racialized. As the relative legitimacy and value of the “war on drugs” has increasingly become a topic of public discussion, how such debates are shaped by new forms of communication and information technologies and prevailing discourses and logics of race and polity, warrants rigorous sociological analysis. The dominant discourses of post-Civil Rights Era Western society are informed by the emergence of colorblind racial ideology (a set of ideological frames that minimize and justify the contemporary existence of structural racism and the persistence of racial inequality) alongside the reemergence of particularly callous and overt racial terms and racist epithets. In this article, we analyze American news publication content and online comments on news stories utilizing critical discourse analysis techniques to examine the relationship between racial discourse and identity construction within debates about the “war on drugs.”

Authors

• Michael Rosino, University of Connecticut

• Matthew W. Hughey, University of Connecticut