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Slavery in the United States was a brutal, racialized system of forced labor which helped provide the startup capital for the  U.S. economy’s meteoric rise. Post-slavery legal race discrimination produced segregation not only the Jim Crow South but also in northern states, where Blacks were denied many benefits of the New Deal that helped lift whites into the middle class. The 60 years since the pas-sage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have witnessed mass incarceration, ongoing police killings of unarmed Blacks, continued discrimination in housing, employment, and credit markers, and a persistent devaluation of Black lives. This history of enslavement and discrimination has yielded disastrous intergenerational consequences for Black wealth and socioeconomic well-being, and calls for reparations have gained currency as a way to redress these historical wrongs. This special double issue of RSF brings together the most current social science research and policy options with regard to reparations for Black Americans.

While reparations have been issued to many peoples around the world, including in the U.S., reparations to Black Americans remain highly contested. Contributor Kathryn Anne Edwards and co-authors use case studies of previous reparations policies to offer important insights into the features that might shape reparations policy for Black Americans. Trina Shanks and colleagues argue that the structure of existing child development accounts provides a practical framework for delivering reparations payments to recipients of all ages through structured savings plans that promote asset growth and fiscal autonomy.

The political feasibility of reparations programs will largely depend on public opinion. Jesse Rhodes and colleagues draw on surveys administered between 2021 and 2023 to show that up to 28 percent of White Americans support cash reparations, up from a tiny 4 percent in 2000. Kamri Hudgins and co-authors suggest that public education on racial disparities may increase the feasibility of a reparations pro-gram. Thus, education on racial disparities in intergenerational wealth, income, health, homeownership, and education may prove to be crucial to affect a federal Black reparations program.

This important double issue of RSF employs rigorous social science research to shed new light on one of the most pressing and contentious policy proposals of our times. Engaging the debate over reparations from the past to the present and from the global to the local, this double issue of RSF provides a valuable roadmap to the issues at stake in the Black American reparations movement.

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In recent decades, the social sciences have struggled to predict, monitor, and understand ongoing social crises. This is due in part to a lack of infrastructure to adequately do so. The American Voices Project (AVP), an experimental public-use platform for collecting qualitative data, was designed to expand the capacity of social science research by complementing existing research methods examining the everyday lives of Americans. The AVP was fielded in 2019-2022 as the country’s first nationally-representative, large-scale, multiple-domain qualitative data collection effort. In this double issue of RSF, sociologists Kathryn J. Edin, Corey D. Fields, David B. Grusky, Marybeth J. Mattingly, Kristen Olson, and Charles Varner, computer scientist Jure Leskovec, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors utilize data from the AVP to determine whether the platform can provide insight into the lives of Americans and address social science’s current shortcomings.

Issue 4 examines Americans’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, identifies and explores emerging crises in the U.S., and includes the first set of classical interpretive studies based on a public-use dataset. Kyle Fee and colleagues find that job loss during the pan-demic was associated with declines in financial and mental well-being, that expanded safety net programs did not disincentivize work, and that existing survey-based monitoring is missing important pockets of deprivation. Katherine Cramer and colleagues discover a more thoroughgoing “disaffection crisis” than has been appreciated to date, a crisis in which low- and middle-income earners often feel profoundly disconnected from politics and have little confidence in their ability to meaningfully effect change. Josefina Flores Morales shows that healthcare costs – even after recent and ongoing reforms in healthcare – remain insurmountable for many Latinx Americans, who must then rely on family for unexpected medical costs.

Issue 5 illustrates how the AVP can be used to uncover hidden populations and to explore how some types of crises, mindsets, or sensibilities can have cascading effects that impact multiple areas of people’s lives. Corey M. Abramson and colleagues use the AVP to uncover the population of Americans experiencing physical pain, showing that while pain is very prevalent, it has larger negative effects on the life trajectories of women and those without a college degree than on other groups. Shira Zilberstein and colleagues discover that when individuals discuss their lives they feature “agentic moments” in which they can claim agency despite facing constraints that could be seen as limiting choice and agency.

This double issue of RSF provides compelling insights into the lives of Americans and convincingly makes the case for building a permanent public-use platform for qualitative research.

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The census has registered more than two centuries of growth and transformation in America’s political, social, and economic life. It traditionally gives us the opportunity to ask big questions about and measure changes in American society. In this double issue of RSF, sociologist and demographer Zhenchao Qian, economist Trevon Logan, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how American society has changed—or stayed the same—from 2010 to 2020.

Topics examined in issue 1 include the impact of census counts, changes in neighborhood demographics, gender inequality in education, and racial inequality in employment. Lisa Neidert and colleagues find that the census consistently undercounts Hispanics, Blacks, and Native Americans and overcounts Whites and Asians, which has negative impacts on state and federal funding for vulnerable communities. Nima Dahir shows the arrival of Black immigrants into Black American neighborhoods often results in a decline in the native Black American population and an increase in White residents. Claudia Buchmann and colleagues reveal that women are now earning more advanced degrees than men in the U.S.; however, rising shares of women, including those who are pursing advanced degrees, are attending for-profit institutions and carrying student debt. Julie Y. Cai and Marybeth J. Mattingly find that workers with variable hours have lower incomes than those who have more stable hours and Black workers earn substantially less than their White counterparts when working jobs with volatile hours.

Themes explored in issue 2 include changes in living arrangements, divergent families, and rural America. Hyunjoon Park and col-leagues find that despite growing public concern about the potential rise in solitary living, the likelihood of living alone has not changed much over the last four decades except for older men, who have an increased likelihood of living alone. Christopher S. Carpenter and col-leagues show that gender minority individuals, including transgender and nonbinary individuals, are less likely to be married, more likely to be widowed, and less likely to live in a traditional two-adult household compared to their cisgender counterparts. Daniel T. Lichter and Kenneth M. Johnson reveal that while rural America is often envisioned as a monolith, it is made up of complex and diverse economic, social, and demographic conditions.

This double issue of RSF provides an updated and insightful snapshot of American society in the 2010s.

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Racial disparities in criminal justice system contact are a pressing concern for both scholars and the public. For 25 years, the Russell Sage Foundation has been at the forefront of this issue and has supported research on law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and incarceration with an emphasis on examining racial and ethnic disparities. Since then, the literature on these topics has expanded and we now have a vast body of research on them. In this special issue of RSF, an interdisciplinary group of contributors review research from over the past two decades to advance our understanding of racial and ethnic bias in law enforcement, criminal justice processes, and incarceration.

Shawn Bushway and colleagues review literature on racial disparities in pretrial detention, sentencing, and outcomes of community corrections programs, such as probation, parole, halfway houses, and work-release programs. They find that systematic issues, rather than individual bias, are the main driver for these disparities and that reforms, such as eliminating pretrial detention for nonviolent offenders, who are not on probation or parole, can be effective tools for reducing racial disparities without creating significant harms to public safety. Alia Nahra and colleagues review literature on the difficulties the formerly incarcerated face when they transition from prison into their communities, a process referred to as reentry. They find that criminalization and punishment, such as criminal record discrimination in housing and employment and parole and probation supervision, stymie reintegration, while support from family and welfare programs help reintegration. They also found that formerly incarcerated Black men and women face greater obstacles when reentering their communities. Emily Ryo and colleges review literature on the criminalization of immigration. They find that while immigration law is considered federal civil law, immigration enforcement has come substantially intertwined with criminal law enforcement. They also find that criminalizing immigration results in the categorization of certain groups as dangerous and results in sustaining and promoting policies that target or have disproportionate impact on certain immigrant groups. Additionally, they find that the U.S. has outsourced immigration enforcement to other countries, such as Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, therefore, the effects of criminalizing immigration are not limited to the U.S.

This volume of RSF provides a fascinating look back at the research conducted on racial disparities in the criminal justice system thus far and offers new avenues for future research.

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The United States is home to the largest deportation system in the world. Between 2001 and 2022, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) carried out nearly 6.5 million deportations. Deportation is often framed as a singular event that happens to an individual. However, as public policy scholar Caitlin Patler and political scientist Bradford Jones argue in this issue of RSF, deportation is a system that encompasses premigration, within-U.S., and post-deportation contexts and outcomes. With Congress recently approving a massive expansion of the U.S. deportation system, understanding its consequences is more important than ever before.

In this issue, an interdisciplinary group of contributors explore the wide range of impacts of the U.S. deportation system. The introduction by Patler and Jones defines the U.S. deportation system and provides a comprehensive historical context for understanding its causes and consequences. Mass deportation is enabled primarily through the merging of U.S. immigration and criminal laws. Ian Peacock explores the proliferation of 287(g) agreements, which deputize local law enforcement to enforce immigration law. He shows that counties with stronger ties to public official associations, such as the National Sheriff’s Association and the Major County Sheriffs of America, were more likely to adopt identical 287(g) agreements, devote more jail space to ICE detainees, and comply with ICE detainer requests at higher rates. The issue also presents empirical analyses of the consequences of the U.S. deportation system. Articles by Youngjin Stephanie Hong and colleagues, Cora Bennett and colleagues, and J. Jacob Kirksey and Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj link deportation to reduced Head Start enrollment, lower K-12 test scores, and declines in college enrollment, respectively. The remaining articles turn to the aftermath of deportation. Erin R. Hamilton and colleagues show that between 2015 and 2020, 11,000 individuals were de facto deportees—family members who leave the country because another family member has been deported—in Mexico, with a disproportionate number being women and children. Further highlighting the importance of family, Ángel A. Escamilla García and Adriana M. Cerón analyze survey data from recently deported Central Americans and find those who left minor children in the U.S. were more likely to intend to remigrate to the U.S.

This issue of RSF sheds light on various dimensions of the increasingly punitive U.S. deportation system and the many ways it harms individuals and communities. In the current era of mass expansion of immigration law enforcement, it will be a valuable educational tool for students, faculty, policymakers, and many other stakeholders.

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Medical clinicians, who are already overworked and burned out, are increasingly expected to understand and treat systemic social issues like poverty and racism. One aspect of this is documenting patient’s social risk factors in electronic health records (EHRs). But EHRs do not always give the full story. Critically, they omit patients’ voices and perspectives about their lives, their care, and whether their needs are being met. In Seen but Not Heard, sociologist Jennifer M. Silva and epidemiologist Annemarie G. Hirsch explore the gaps between what clinicians document in EHRs and women’s lived experiences.

Drawing on interviews with 87 non-college-educated, economically disadvantaged women living in rural America and their health records from a large, nonprofit health system, Silva and Hirsch find that the stories that medical records provide and the stories that women tell about themselves differ dramatically. Medical charts often translate women’s suffering into sterile diagnostic codes, prescriptions, and treatment plans. Some women felt heard by their clinicians and believed they received adequate care. Many of these women thought their clinicians went above and beyond to help meet their needs by offering them information on how to apply for benefits like food stamps or childcare subsidies and helping them obtain necessary items like mattress covers and winter coats. More often, however, women felt that clinicians were detached from their everyday struggles to survive, whether that meant keeping their families intact even in the face of violence or finding money to pay the never-ending string of bills.

Silva and Hirsch argue that because the system of healthcare delivery interprets social problems as individual failings, it often reproduces long-standing injurious stereotypes of women as hysterical, recalcitrant, impure, and gluttonous. For some healthcare providers, knowledge about patients’ social risk factors can become a source of control and punishment, such as denying patients care or reporting patients to child welfare services. Patients described clinicians mobilizing harmful stereotypes about marriage and motherhood, race, and poverty during their appointments. Some of the women’s most traumatic experiences in the healthcare system were completely missing from their EHRs. These troubling experiences ultimately deter women from accessing healthcare, discourage them from sharing their experiences with clinicians, and in some cases, make their health and social problems worse. Silva and Hirsch offer several policies and practices that would improve women’s experiences in clinical encounters, such as training clinicians in trauma-informed and culturally responsive care, as well as making national investments in housing, food security, transportation, and environmental research.

Seen but Not Heard is a disturbing but necessary examination of the ways vulnerable women are often failed by the healthcare system and offers solutions that will allow healthcare workers to better address the structural barriers faced by their patients.

Americans are deeply divided about gender. Like other issues in the US, debates about gender are extremely polarized and can spark intense anger and conflict. These “gender flashpoints” include gender identity, gender and parenting, gender-neutral restrooms, the use of identifying pronouns, and participation in women’s sports. Even the term gender itself has become contested. In this divisive social context, advocates on both sides have reduced complex issues to all-or-nothing propositions. Many people are confused about these topics, embarrassed about what they do not know, or afraid that they will be called bigots if they say the “wrong thing.” In Gender Flashpoints, sociologist Abigail C. Saguy gets to the root of these major disagreements about gender.

Saguy interviews activists across the full political spectrum about a wide range of contemporary debates over gender to better understand points of contention as well as surprising areas of agreement. She finds that at the crux of many of these debates are disputes about the goals of gender-related advocacy, the strategies to achieve these goals, and whose rights are being advocated for. For example, when activists discuss pregnancy-related policy issues, there is disagreement as to whether the term pregnant person or pregnant woman should be used. While some believe pregnant person affirms the existence of nonbinary people and trans men, others believe it erases women. These differences often appear to be simply about language, but they are, in fact, disagreements about worldviews, identities, and legitimacy.

One of the conflicts Saguy dives into is the issue of genderneutral restrooms. She finds when interviewing different activists about what they thought of the topic that they initially repeated the familiar, mainstream polarized discourse. LGBTQ+ activists and mainstream feminists emphasized the importance of restroom access, especially for transgender and gender-nonconforming people. Conservatives and gender-critical feminists emphasized women’s and girls’ vulnerability and need for privacy and safety in public restrooms. Across the political spectrum, activists spoke about how those on the “other side” were unwilling to engage in productive dialogue. However, Saguy also finds that activists on both sides recognized the complexity of the issue and agreed on the need for public bathrooms that provide everyone with greater safety and privacy. Activists across the spectrum showed enthusiasm for desegregated public restrooms that include an open space for sinks and mirrors—along with toilets with European style, floor-to-ceiling doors. Saguy advocates for engaging in dialogue about charged issues, such as gender-neutral bathrooms, in order to help identify workable solutions to seemingly intractable social problems.

Gender Flashpoints is a fascinating and comprehensive view of the deeply personal and divisive topic of gender that offers hope for finding common ground and a path forward.