Uneven Roads: An Introduction to U.S. Racial and Ethnic Politics

This groundbreaking new volume, Uneven Roads: An Introduction to U.S. Race and Ethnic Politics explores when, why, and how race and ethnicity matter in U.S. politics. Using the metaphor of a road, with twists, turns, and dead ends, Uneven Roads begins with an introduction to broad political racialization and the roots of modern interpretations of race and ethnicity. Historical chapters on each of the five groups identified in the U.S. Census―Native American, African American, Latino, Asian American, and White―offer an engaging narrative on race, prejudice, equal rights and opportunity up to the 1960s. Policy and social issue chapters carry the story up to the present day, providing a wide lens on topics including voting rights, political representation, education and criminal justice policies, and the immigrant experience. A final chapter on intersectionality examines how groups go beyond the boundaries of race and ethnicity to come together on matters of class, gender, and sexuality. No other book on the market maps U.S. race and ethnic politics with the same breadth and scope as Uneven Roads. 

The book’s structure and narrative are designed to encourage comparison and reflection. Students are provided with the history and context of U.S. race and ethnic politics and build the skills to apply their own conclusions. Centered in political science, but with interdisciplinary appeal, this text provides both a sobering and hopeful assessment of American racial progress.

Todd Shaw has appointments in both the Department of Political Science and the Department of Political Science at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. He is the College of Arts and Science’s Distinguished Associate Professor of Political Science and African American Studies. From 2017 to 2021, Shaw was the department chair of political science and later the interim associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the College of Arts & Sciences. He researches and teaches in the areas of African American politics, urban politics, and public policy, as well as citizen activism and social movements.

Louis DeSipio is professor of political science and professor of Chicano/Latino studies at the University of California, Irvine (UCI). His research interests include ethnic politics, Latino politics, immigration, naturalization, and U.S. electoral politics. He has designed and collected primary survey data that measure Latino political values, attitudes, and behaviors, and has designed and directed ethnographic research projects that added context and nuance to the survey data. DeSipio’s research has expanded the boundaries of the race and ethnic politics scholarship to inform other subfields, particularly immigration and immigrant settlement policy studies.

Dianne Pinderhughes is Rev. Edmund P. Joyce C.S.C. Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, where she is professor of political science and of Africana studies. She is author of Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics: A Reexamination of Pluralist Theory, and coauthor of Contested Transformation: Race, Gender and Political Leadership in 21st Century America (2016). Pinderhughes’s research addresses inequality, with a focus on racial, ethnic, and gender politics and public policy; explores the creation of American civil society institutions in the twentieth century; and analyzes their influence on the formation of voting rights policy. She served as president of the American Political Science Association from 2007 to 2008 and as president of the International Political Science Association from 2021 to 2023.

Toni-Michelle C. Travis is professor emerita of policy and government at George Mason University and a former fellow of Oxford University’s Rothermere American Institute. She has taught and conducted research on urban, racial/ethnic, and Virginia politics. She coauthor The Meaning of Difference: American Constructions of Race and Ethnicity, Sex and Gender, Social Class, Sexuality, and Disability (McGraw Hill, 2015). Travis has served as a political analyst on Virginia and national politics.