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Songs dealing with illegal drugs have long dotted popular music. It was not until the aftermath of the sixties youth counterculture, however, that drug lyrics became a recurring musical motif. In the decades since, the lyrical treatment of drugs has undergone change. Heroin and cocaine have largely, though not exclusively, been treated antagonistically, with the animosity toward cocaine becoming more pronounced after crack cocaine was introduced in the mid‐1980s. Marijuana, on the other hand, has generally been perceived as innocuous, if not positively assessed, and this treatment has crossed the decades into the nineties. In more recent years, however, the positive assessment of marijuana has undergone change, with younger musicians more likely to decry the harm that drugs do than older musicians do. This prosocial aspect of contemporary popular music has been largely ignored.

According to Hubert Blalock's 1967 power-threat theory, the larger the minority group's size the greater the threat to the majority group. Most of Blalock's examples, and much of the subsequent empirical investigation into the power-threat thesis, focus on Anglo and African American relations. Changing demographics will likely alter existing majority-minority relations as Hispanics displace African Americans as the largest minority. This will change the face of racial discrimination in the country. Indeed, this paper suggests that the animosity toward Latinos by both the majority white and minority black populations may be more intense than those shaping contemporary white-black relations. Two key lifestyle features that have not contaminated black-white relations may exacerbate hostility toward Hispanics: their perceived illegal status in the country, and the perception that Hispanics resist learning English. The role of the media in perpetuating these stereotypes and inflaming hostility toward Latinos is also discussed.

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