Remarkably little public administration scholarship has explored the dynamic of race as manifest in patterns of policy interpretation and discretionary judgments of individual administrators. We raise the issue of race in public administration despite the widespread view that the lens of race is obsolete or counterproductive. We argue that scholarship in the field has failed to come to terms with how this neglect has contributed to maintaining long-standing policies and practices with racist implications. We explore the question of whether the lens of race reveals the outline of an ethic for administrative practice. After a brief illustrative historical review, we critique the current approaches to incorporating race into administrative practice (managing diversity and cultural competence) as inadequate for the necessary rethinking at the theoretical level. We propose an ethical framework based on American pragmatist philosophy and on Hannah Arendt's notion of inclusive solidarity.Race is a complex and perplexing force that traces the fault lines of citizenship, power, and privilege through the course of U.S. history. Within this dynamic, the administrative state and public administrators have played a central, though largely unexplored, role in the interpretation and administration of government policies that positioned people outside of the state or maintained their subordinate status on the basis of race. We examine this role as well as the legal and managerial solutions that have been attempted to date, and we offer an ethic of race for administrative action grounded in pragmatism to move us beyond the racial patterns in which the academic field and practice remain embedded.We raise the issue of race despite pervasive views among social commentators, including some members of so-called minority groups, that race talk is 578
Historians of American public administration have largely perpetuated its self-image of neutrality and scientific detachment. Yet public agencies are shaped by their political and cultural environments. Long-standing myths and historical narratives about the meaning of America reveal not neutrality but racial bias dating back centuries, a pattern sustained, in part, by failure to recognize its existence. This article explores how historical understandings of the administrative state have neglected the influence of racial bias on the development of administrative practices. We suggest that a reconstructed understanding may strengthen support for anti-racism efforts, such as diversity training, representative bureaucracy, and social equity.
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