Racial Bias: A Buried Cornerstone of the Administrative State

DOI10.1177/0095399720921508
Published date01 November 2020
Date01 November 2020
Subject MatterArticles
https://doi.org/10.1177/0095399720921508
Administration & Society
2020, Vol. 52(10) 1470 –1490
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0095399720921508
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Article
Racial Bias: A Buried
Cornerstone of the
Administrative State
Jennifer Alexander1 and Camilla Stivers2
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.
Keywords
administrative responsibility, bureaucratic neutrality, race
The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant “government of the people”
but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term
“people” to actually mean.
—Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
1The University of Texas at San Antonio, USA
2Cleveland State University, Ohio, USA
Corresponding Author:
Jennifer Alexander, College of Public Policy, The University of Texas at San Antonio, 501 W
César E Chávez Blvd, San Antonio, TX 78207, USA.
Email: Jennifer.Alexander@utsa.edu
921508AASXXX10.1177/0095399720921508Administration & SocietyAlexander and Stivers
research-article2020
Alexander and Stivers 1471
A fundamental problem with a volitional conception of racism . . . is that it can
blind us to the ways in which seemingly “innocent” people can often be
unwittingly complicitous in racial oppression . . . The “heart” does not have to
be involved in order for an action or institution to be racist . . .
—Tommie Shelby (2002)
Among scholars and practitioners alike, administrative thought has centered
on the issue of which norms should guide the exercise of administrative
power. Ever since Max Weber, devotion to rationality—to “impersonal and
functional purposes” rather than to personal aims and values—has been the
centerpiece of an administrative vocation (Gerth & Mills, 1946, p. 199).
Around this norm are values like the rule of law, bureaucratic anonymity,
devotion to administrative science, and ideological neutrality—a model
Hannah Arendt (1972) once referred to as “rule by nobody” (p. 137).
As Barry Karl (1976) noted four decades ago, historians of American pub-
lic administration “have tended to take its history in terms which satisfied the
practicing ideologues of the field . . . that it was essentially a methodological
field posing no threat to the traditional political structure and its relation to the
American conception of democracy” (p. 490). Yet government agencies can
no more avoid the impact of their historical and cultural contexts than can any
human individual or group. Modern complex organizations are, as DiMaggio
and Powell (1983) note, institutionally isomorphic; the structural features and
dynamics they have in common originate in the political and cultural environ-
ment they share and perpetuate. As Giddens (1984) argues, contexts of action,
with respect to single organizations and among groups of them, are repro-
duced and changed through individual and group sense-making and shared
understandings. Like other Americans, bureaucrats are immersed in narratives
and myths that shape and give meaning to their work and lives. This relation-
ship between context and practice goes unacknowledged in the model of neu-
tral administration, in favor of an illusory form of objectivity.
With this in mind, we approach the historical development of American
public administration critically, along lines we see as neglected and impor-
tant. Administration is not, in fact, a matter of disconnected neutrality, but is
shaped and guided by historical narratives, among other factors in its envi-
ronment. Narratives impart meaning, but they also limit positive change and
promote “institutional monoculturalism” afflicted with unexamined preju-
dice (Prasad, 1997, p. 129). Relatively little critical attention within the litera-
ture of public administration has examined the impact of race-biased historical
narratives (but see Alexander, 1997; Witt, 2006 and external but relevant,
Jung et al., 2011). Neglected but significant factors include the following:

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