Racial Bias: A Buried Cornerstone of the Administrative State

Abstract

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.

Resistance or reinforcement? A critical discourse analysis of racism and anti-Blackness in public administration scholarship

“…In public administration, the field's historic focus on neutrality has slipped naturally into a colorblind ethos that obscures the racist underpinnings of the field (see Alexander & Stivers, 2020;Gooden, 2014;Portillo, Bearfield, & Humphrey, 2020; for further discussion). Colorblindness as an aspirational value of public administration is not only unattainable, but it creates, perpetuates, and exacerbates systems of injustice and oppression (Bonilla-Silva, 2006).…”

Racialized Emotional Labor: An Unseen Burden in the Public Sector

“…However, during this period, there was significant effort put forth by key actors, both implicitly and explicitly, to ensure that racial minorities were excluded from many public arenas. Notable events include President Woodrow Wilson resegregating the civil service (Alexander & Stivers, 2020), the denial of Asian and African immigrants until the McCarran-Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (Yanow, 2003), and efforts during the Progressive movement to minimize political participation from new immigrants in American cities (Portillo et al, 2020). In short, at the genesis of public administration, we see many efforts to prioritize whiteness and minimize the influence and participation of racial minorities.…”

Racialized Burdens: Applying Racialized Organization Theory to the Administrative State

“…To illustrate the connections between racialized organizations and administrative burdens we examine three domains where racialized burdens are prominent in the US administrative state. In each case, we illustrate the embedded nature of burdens by drawing back the curtain on historical patterns of deliberate exclusion.. Over time, the racialized origins and intent of the organization become normalized, forgotten, and hard to discern (Alexander and Stivers 2020). A straightforward example are American police forces.…”

“…Studying racialized burdens therefore requires both retracing the history and origins of particular rules, practices, procedures, policies, or memos that give rise to burdens, while connecting those administrative actions to the historical context in which they emerged. This is a blind spot for the field of public administration, which is more attentive to its intellectual history and the great books of an earlier age than to issues of race or historical context in administrative practice (Alexander and Stivers 2020;Moynihan 2009;Roberts 2020b). This historical amnesia prevents us from seeing how actual projects of administrative design constructed racialized burdens that are left largely unmentioned in administrative theory.…”

“…Existing theory, however, with some important exceptions (e.g. Alexander 1997;Alexander and Stivers 2020; Barnes and Henly 2018;Michener 2018; Watkins-Hayes 2011), has not incorporated the extent to which these burdens are systematically embedded in racialized organizations that serve as the intermediary between citizens and the state. While much attention has been paid to how administrative burdens can facilitate distributive effects via hidden politics (Herd and Moynihan 2018), there has been limited attention to race as a motivating factor behind those politics, and the resultant inequalities.…”