The national campaigns waged by Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008 for the Democratic Party's nomination for president drew unprecedented attention to the dynamics of gender and race in American politics. The Republican Party's nomination of Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, for vice president intensified and extended the national discourse on the meaning and impact of gender in national politics. Indeed, scholars and pundits engaged in vigorous debates as to whether racism or sexism was most apparent in media coverage of these candidates and their campaigns, and how a gender bias against women or a racial bias against an African American man might influence voter choice for president.

In a cartoon on the 2008 presidential race, one woman tells another, casually over coffee, “Now all we need is a woman of color in this race – that would really mess with people's minds.” Insightfully, the cartoon underscores the complexity of how gender and race – independently and in interaction with each other – complicate American politics. For women of color, gender and race do not involve an either-or proposition when it comes to their identity formation and their lived experiences. But for all the attention the 2008 election showered on gender and racial dynamics in American life, gender and race were largely viewed as independent of or in opposition to each other. Hence, the intersection of gender and race, as lived by women of color, remained little understood or examined.