Race and the Study of Public Administration

• Author: Frank Anechiarico
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12785
• Published date: 01 July 2017
• Date: 01 July 2017

622 Public Administration Review • July | August 2017

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 77, Iss. 4, pp. 622–623. © 2017 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12785.

Frank Anechiarico teaches at Hamilton

College, where he is the Maynard-Knox

Professor of Government and Law. He

is also member of the doctoral faculty

of the City University of New York. His

research focuses on public integrity and

organizational behavior. He co-authored

The Pursuit of Absolute Integrity

and

Urban

America: Politics and Policy

, and is widely

published in scholarly journals including

Public Administration Review

,

Urban Affairs

Quarterly

, and

Criminal Justice Ethics

.

E-mail: fanechia@hamilton.edu

Book Reviews

Daniel Kato , Liberalized Lynching: Building a New

Racialized State ( New York : Oxford University

Press , 2016 ). 232 pp. $39.95 (hardcover), ISBN:

9780190232573.

H ow central should race be in public

administration research and scholarship?

The field has studied the implementation of

anti-discrimination laws and the differential attitudes

and experiences of racial and ethnic groups in their

encounters with the state. There are also clear, ethical

standards in the field in favor of fairness, such as

Principle 4 of the Code of Ethics of the American

Society for Public Administration ( 2014 ). This

principle admonishes members to “strengthen social

equity.” The word “race” does not appear in the Code;

Americans have a long and murderous tradition of

not looking at discrimination where it is most obvious

and most damaging. This is the point of the book

under review. Of course, lynching is an extreme

and egregious example of government acceptance

(or toleration) of discrimination, and it is absurd to

consider what might be more or less so. There are

a great many, contemporary instances of racialized

administration that are routine and legal (Anechiarico

2017 ).

What should trouble scholars of public

administration is the way the sovereign power of

the state comprehended a regime of kidnapping,

torture, and murder. Understanding how the

regime was supported and sustained has become

increasingly important, not just because Americans

regularly confront live elements of the regime, but

because the country currently faces an opportunity

to substantially reform a criminal justice system that

is heir to that regime (Alexander 2010 ). Crime rates

are at historic lows, both nationally and in nearly

every local jurisdiction. Further, the moral objections

on the left to racialized incarceration and capital

punishment has met the fiscal objections to their cost,

of the voices on the right (Ward 2012 ). However,

taking advantage of this opportunity requires a clear

understanding of the dimensions and consequences

of a system of governance, of which criminal justice is

just a part.

David Garland contributes to this understanding

in a book on the death penalty ( 2010 ). However,

Garland ’ s theoretical examination of crime and

punishment in The Culture of Control: Crime and

Social Order in Contemporary Society ( 2001 ) brings

the administration of racism into sharper focus.

Beginning in the 1970s, there was a clear shift in

the values of policy makers in all three branches of

American government. This led them to interpret and

apply new, retributivist drug laws differentially by

race and use the power of the state to extend punitive

measure beyond street-level, into the homes of Black

families. Instead of questioning this shift in the

culture of control, Garland reminds us, criminologists

and scholars of public policy warned of a new class

of “super predators” who were just emerging into

fearsome adolescence (DiIulio 1995 ; Wilson 1995 ).

Will we get it right this time? The stakes are very high.

Political rhetoric from both major parties, in the wake

of the 2016 election, asserts that popular rejection

of “identity politics” was responsible for the rise of

Donald Trump. A week after the election, Mark Lilla ’ s

op-ed piece in the New York Times declared “The End

of Identity Liberalism” and bemoaned “moral panic

about racial, gender and sexual identity” ( 2016 ).

Since then, strategists and pundits have echoed

Lilla. However, this version of post-election finger

pointing trivializes discrimination and real brutality as

grievances of the elite. A convenient excuse for doing

nothing.

It is “doing nothing” that preoccupies the author

of Liberalized Lynching: Building a New Racialized

State . Daniel Kato ’ s compelling argument about the

legal status of the American program of racist murder

is part of a new wave of critical race theory, which

emphasizes the racialized foundations of American

governance.

Race and the Study of Public Administration

Danny L. Balfour , Editor

Frank Anechiarico

Hamilton College