In Race, Gender and Political Representation, Beth Reingold, Kerry L. Haynie, and Kirsten Widner examine what is missed when the political activities of Black and Latina state legislators are assessed through traditional models that are typically used in the subfields of either racial and ethnic politics or women and politics. The authors proffer that an intersectional approach allows for scholars to develop models that are better attuned to the political actions and experiences of women of color. Based on an original dataset that examines the policy impact; political behavior; and the mere presence of Black women and men, Latinas and Latinos, as well as White women and men state legislators, the authors demonstrate the failures of a single-axis approach to studying their legislative activities. Reasonably, Reingold, Haynie, and Widner suggest an intersectional approach that regards the role of race and gender as being necessary to understand the representation of women of color.

To make their claim, Reingold, Haynie, and Widner draw from both quantitative and qualitative data to respond to empirical and epistemological questions of political representation. The “intersectionality-as-testable-explanation approach” (Ange-Marie Hancock, “Neurobiology, Intersectionality, and Politics: Paradigm Warriors in Arms?” Perspectives on Politics, 2013) is based on the behaviors of women-of-color state legislators themselves as being different from their raced or gendered counterparts. More than being wholly situated in the theories or hypotheses, this intersectional approach centers the meaningful differences of Black and Latina lawmakers in select statehouses in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This work seeks to complicate conceptualizations of descriptive representation using an intersectional approach to raise questions about the salience of race-gendered categories on political representation. The authors adroitly dissect what the traditional empirical models in the women and politics subfield and the racial and ethnic politics subfield get wrong or miss when they evaluate Black and Latina state legislators. This work pushes scholars to rethink assumptions of who and/or what is excluded or included when employing a single-axis mode of analysis.

Chapters 1 and 2 of this text are a must-read for students of political representation—even those who are less interested in studying women of color or identity politics. These foundational chapters are a primer for the necessity of an intersectional approach. The authors push readers to rethink assumptions based on what they believe they know about one category (such as race or gender) by adding it to another category. Consequently, to add gender to race to better understand the experiences of those with multiple politically salient identities is a faulty assumption. Scholars of political representation instead should center power and the way the multiple interlocking structures that serve to simultaneously privilege and oppress members of social groups interact to produce qualitatively different forms and modes of political representation for state legislators across categories of difference. The authors astutely draw from Black feminist literatures to demonstrate that women of color have long theorized from their positionality to show the myriad of ways that they have been overlooked, rendered invisible, and reduced to unintelligible political actors (J. C. Nash, Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality, 2018; P. H. Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment, 2000; Ange-Marie Hancock, Intersectionality: An Intellectual History, in Carol Hardy-Fanta, Pei-te Lien, Dianne Pinderhughes, and Christine Marie Sierra, Contested Transformation, 2016; Moraga and Anzaldúa, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, 1983; Evelyn Simien, Black Feminist Voices in Politics, 2006; Julia Jordan-Zachery, “Am I a Black Woman or a Woman Who Is Black? A Few Thoughts on the Meaning of Intersectionality,” Politics & Gender 3[2], 2007; May, Pursuing Intersectionality, Unsettling Dominant Imaginaries, 2015). The authors contend that the relative invisibleness of how other groups experience politics and act politically has led to empirical inaccuracies and theoretical fallacies, along with gaps in scholarly knowledge. Consequently, centering those that have been misrepresented or undertheorized in American politics is both a social justice project and a step toward a more accurate scholarly depiction of the real world. The authors posit that an intersectional approach requires that we ask a different set of questions as well as develop theories, hypotheses, measures, and models that are reflective of the complexities of raced-gendered representation.

Some readers may take exception to the authors’ focus on bill sponsorship—given that they argue that it is the most “proactive form of representational advocacy available to legislators” (pp. 8–9)—precisely because other forms of political representation may produce more opportunities for legislators with marginalized identities to effectively represent constituents (M. D. Minta, Oversight: Representing the Interests of Blacks and Latinos in Congress, 2011; C. R. Grose, Congress in Black and White: Race and Representation in Washington and at Home, 2011; C. J. Clark, Gaining Voice: The Causes and Consequences of Black Representation in the American States, 2019; K. Celis and S. Childs, Feminist Democratic Representation, 2020; Evelyn Simien, Historic Firsts: How Symbolic Empowerment Changes US Politics, 2015). Others may note that their dataset, as impressive as it is, is dated and somewhat limited, drawing from state legislators who served in 15 statehouses in 1997 and 2005. However, I view these as lesser issues in relation to the overall goal of the book. The empirical chapters effectively demonstrate that scholars should not rely on a single axis approach to studying state legislators. The data reveal that women, people of color, and women of color have dissimilar representational leadership, as can be seen in the policies that they champion. The distinct selling point of this book is precisely the authors’ successful demonstration that a single-axis approach obscures what we know about group interests and substantive representation. Consequently, this approach could and should be replicated with other data.

Race, Gender and Political Representation could easily be adopted in courses on minority politics, state and local politics, women and politics, and political methodology. Other courses would include those that are often cross-listed with Latinx studies, Black studies, women’s studies, and/or political science. The book’s layout is well suited for graduate students, enabling them to follow along in a logical and coherent manner. This book would pair nicely with studies on women of color in politics, such as Contested Transformation (2016), N. E. Brown’s Sisters in the Statehouse (2014), and C. E. Bejarano’s The Latina Advantage (2013). There are a host of new articles on Black women and Latina state legislators that would complement this text by incorporating a richer and more nuanced explanation of the substantive representation of this group of policy makers. Taught alongside texts that offer readers a deeper dive into why and how Black and Latina state legislators seek to represent their constituents, Race, Gender and Political Representation would provide the necessary introduction to understanding the rationale for an intersectional approach. This kind of pairing would help readers contextualize the hows and whys of Reingold, Haynie, and Widner’s findings.

At the heart of this book, Reingold, Haynie, and Widner pose one fundamental question: “How do gender and race interact to affect the election, behavior, and impact of all individuals—raced women and gendered minorities alike?” (p. 4). Their response is that a single-axis approach that is rooted in an either/other theoretical frame provides an insufficient picture of how state legislators leverage their identities to represent constituents. This book advances scholarship by taking seriously the assumptions that scholars (un)willingly hold when they employ epistemological and empirical techniques that are rooted in exclusionary practices. In short, an intersectional model offers a broader and more encompassing portrait of political representation. By questioning these single-axis assumptions, the authors challenge scholars to move from overly simplistic notions of political representation.