This virtual issue highlights race and ethnicity scholars’ contributions to Politics & Gender and the discipline. This collection features work at the cutting-edge of theoretical and methodological advances in the study of political behavior, public opinion, and political change. This far-reaching scholarship helps us better understand contemporary American politics and the integral leadership of Black women in the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2020 Presidential Election.

In “Square Pegs and Round Holes”, Junn argues for a dynamic and multi-dimensional conceptualization, measurement, and analysis of gender that better explains “how power and hierarchy structure the opportunities and rewards for political action among individuals.” The Critical Perspectives sections and special symposium included in this virtual issue provide an overview of how intersectional theory and analysis in political science research deepens our understanding of American politics.

Complicating top-town accounts of the Civil Rights era, Simien and McGuire offer a comprehensive view of how working and middle-class Black women organizers forged the period’s social transformation from the bottom-up. Employing an intersectional quantitative analysis, Walker and Garcia-Castañon find that vicarious experiences with the criminal justice system uniquely politicize women of color. Further clarifying present-day events, Price and Killen assess cross-movement coalition-building prospects through political intersectionality and decolonial citizenship praxis.

- Romelia M. Solano, University of Notre Dame, Politics & Gender editorial assistant