The ABC‐X model is used for analyzing stress and coping within families. The model consists of (A) the stressor event, (B) the resources available to a family, (C) the family's perceptions of the stressor, and (X) the likelihood of crisis. Variables B and C determine whether the stressor event (A) results in crisis. The ABC‐X model has been refined through the inclusion of additional factors such as a family's social context and further developed into the double ABC‐X model by subsequent research. The double ABC‐X model addresses postcrisis coping processes that determine whether a family can adapt to a crisis. It includes (aA) the pileup of additional stressors and the original crisis; (bB) existing resources and resources developed in order to meet the crisis; (cC) a family's perceptions of the crisis, additional stressors, and its available resources; and (xX) the likelihood of adaptation to crisis. The ABC‐X and double ABC‐X models are influential in family research and counseling.

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.

Recent 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. As demonstrated by the long and arduous struggle for political influence and representation for people of color in the United States, the question of political power is paramount for bringing to light and thwarting the mechanisms of racial oppression. Almost all U. S. citizens, regardless of race, now legally have some capacity, through channels such as voting, to influence policies and elections. Yet structural arrangements and meso-and micro-level social practices influence the capacity to access and exercise political power. For instance, in Mississippi in the 1960s, African Americans, 1 despite having the legal right to vote, routinely faced violence, harassment, and racially biased enforcement of ambiguous rules by local actors (U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2001). While the overt and rigid racial exclusivity that once characterized political life in American society has seemingly waned, rendering the walls circumscribing access to things like citizenship and suffrage somewhat more porous and flexible, vast disparities in politically distributed resources and influence over policy endure. The subject of political power is well trod ground. Sociologists have often fixed their theoretical and empirical scope upon the political sphere. The resultant body of work has brought forth a myriad of fruitful insights into how power and inequality operate through sociopolitical apparatuses. Marxian and Weberian streams of political sociology have, for instance, long emphasized the role of the state and political sphere in facilitating social group relationships of conflict and domination. And over the last 30 years (cf. Omi & Winant, 1986), with recently mounting depth, complexity, and frequency, sociological explorations of the state and political sphere in terms of the construction of racial

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.

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