Chronicling Inequity: 25 Years of Racial and Ethnic Politics Scholarship in SPPQ

In this review essay, we discuss what State Politics and Policy Quarterly has taught us about racial and ethnic politics (REP). After discussing the challenges associated with studying REP, we provide three different approaches to illuminate what extant studies have taught us about REP in the context of state politics. The first approach uses traditional computational text analysis methods, while the second approach uses AI to help classify studies. Informed by themes identified using the second approach, the third approach provides a close read of studies in three categories: Racial Inequality and Institutional Constraint; Education, Immigration, and Latino Politics; and Race and Redistribution. Although we recognize what published works have taught us about REP, we also point to areas of improvement, providing a clarion call to the section to be as comfortable engaging with racism as it is engaging with race.