A Noteworthy Absence: How and why Race and Racism is Ignored by Public Administration Scholarship

Abstract

This article examines the substantial lack of inquiry by public administration scholarship into how race shapes and has been shaped by U.S. public institutions, laws and public administration. The paper finds that pertinent matters of racism have evolved in the shadow of public administrative practices, and that the relevance, each for the other, warrants substantially more inquiry.

A New Era and New Concepts in the Study of Race in Public Administration

“…Based on articles in the symposium, Herbert (1974) highlighted, among other things, racial and cultural biases faced by minority public administrators and the absence of racial minority perspectives in public administration scholarship and teaching. Alas, there have been few sustained follow-up efforts in PAR and in the broader public administration literature on engaging race directly and in an in-depth manner (Alexander 1997;Witt 2011).…”

Reimagining race and gender in public administration and public policy: Insights from an interdisciplinary systematic review

“…Notable prior studies bring out the need for an interdisciplinary boundary spanning perspective on race and gender. Alexander (1997, p. 344), in one of the earliest reviews of race drawing upon 10 leading public administration journals, makes the pointed assessment that public administration theory and practice are responsible for “an avoidance of the problem of race.” More than a decade later, Witt (2011, p. 549) makes a similar observation about the “absence of direct consideration of race” in public administration and political science. Similarly on gender, Hutchinson and Mann (2004, p. 79) ask, “[Why] other disciplines are fluent in feminisms and public administration is not?”…”

“…Indeed, a number of scholars question the effectiveness of public administration and closely related disciplines in addressing theoretical as well as policy and administration challenges pertaining to race and gender (Alexander, 1997; Alexander & Stivers, 2010; Bearfield, 2009; Carey & Dickinson, 2015; Hutchinson & Mann, 2004; Witt, 2011). Gooden's (2015b) characterization of racial equity as a nervous area of government provides insight into possible reasons behind the lack of deeper engagement with race.…”

A Primer on Asian Americans and Asian American Studies for Public Administration

“…PA has emerging scholarship on race/ethnicity and impacts of institutional racism, but lacks nuance in understanding race/ethnicity (Alexander & Stivers, 2010;House-Niamke & Eckerd, 2020;Witt, 2011) with little to no focus on Asian Americans (Broadnax et al, 2018). Heckler (2017) details how public institutions avoid explicit discussions of race, which maintains white supremacy and racism.…”

“…Heckler (2017) details how public institutions avoid explicit discussions of race, which maintains white supremacy and racism. Systematic reviews of PA and political science journals identified articles that mention race, but with a narrow focus on affirmative action hiring (Alexander, 1997;Sabharwal et al, 2018;Witt, 2011).…”