A look at race and ethnicity issues in public administration that includes an overview of policies, important legal decisions, and race in the public workspace.

1. Race and Ethnicity, Policy,
and the Public Workspace
Equity and Diversity in Public Administration

2. Introduction to Socio-
Demographic Areas for the Course
• Social categories
• Humans have a natural tendency to divide people into categories.
• Schemas (conceptual categories)
• Logic
• Emotion (creates prejudice/stereotypes)
• Creation of in-groups and out-groups
• They do so based through two primary means:
• Achieved characteristics
• Ascribed characteristics
• What do we mean by achieved characteristics?
• Characteristics that are acquired during the course of living.
• It seems to suggest that it is based on achievement, but we will question whether this is really the case.
• What do we mean by ascribed characteristics?
• These are characteristics that are innate and set at one’s birth.
• Typically physical characteristics.
• Each of these two categories may either be nominal (shared attributes) or graduated (a ranked
quantitative continuum).
• Achieved nominal
• Member of a prestigious organization, club, etc.
• Achieved graduated
• Income, class
• Ascribed nominal
• Gender, race
• Ascribed graduated
• Age

3. Introduction to Socio-
Demographic Areas for the Course
• Inequality
• This is a measure of the degree of variance in the distribution of people between ranked
social categories.
• Because inequality is measured by distributions, it is important to understand how we
can measure distribution statistically.
• Mean – the average of all reported values, which is calculated by adding all of the values
and dividing by the total number of values.
• Traditional approach used by sociologists.
• Variance – a measure of the spread of scores (dispersion) around the mean.
• The larger the variance, the further the individual cases are from the mean.
• More inequality
• The smaller the variance, the closer the individual cases are from the mean.
• Less inequality
• Skewness – the extent to which outlier cases depart markedly from the mean.
• Skewness affects the reliability of the mean as extreme values will alter the mean.
• Structured inequality – stratification is not random, with groups and individuals
occupying different positions by chance, rather, social institutions such as government,
the economy, and education operate to assure the position of various groups.

4. Introduction to Socio-
Demographic Areas for the Course
• Two mechanisms:
• Allocation of people to social categories
• Institutionalization of practices that allocate resources unequally across these categories
• Two specific mechanisms:
• Exploitation – occurs when people in one social group expropriate a resource produced by
members of another social group and prevent them from realizing the full value of their effort
in producing it.
• Opportunity hoarding – occurs when one social group restricts access to a scarce resource,
either through outright denial or by exercising monopoly control that requires out-group
members to pay rent in return for access.
• Examples:
• Slavery
• Jim Crow Laws
• Unequal access creates:
• Inequality of condition – variations in people’s living standards or life conditions.
• Inequality of opportunity – differences in people’s chance of acquiring social
resources.
• Inequality of life chances

5. A Very Brief History of African-
Americans and Discrimination in the
United States: The Constitution
• Early History:
• The Constitution created inequality:
• 3/5 compromise (Article I, Section 2)
• “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states
which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers,
which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons,
including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not
taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”
• No federal restriction on slavery until 1808 (Article I, Section 9)
• “The migration of importation of such persons as any of the states now existing
shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the
year one thousand eight hundred and eight…”
• Article IV, Section 2
• No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof,
escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein,
be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of
the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

6. A Very Brief History of African-
Americans and Discrimination in the
United States: Civil War and Jim Crow
• Emancipation Proclamation – 1863 executive order issued by President Lincoln decreeing that all slaves
were free.
• 13th Amendment
• 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their
jurisdiction.
• 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
• 14th Amendment
• 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any
law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any
person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
• 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
• 15th Amendment
• 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
• 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

7. A Very Brief History of African-
Americans and Discrimination in the
United States: Civil War and Jim Crow
• Jim Crow – a series of far-reaching laws passed in the post-
Civil War era that segregated the races.
• In the South the legal system was a formal mechanism for
creating inequality between blacks and whites.
• Separate facilities, schools, and restrooms.
• Undermined the enforcement of the Civil War Amendments.
• Jim Crow creates structured inequality through opportunity
hoarding and continued exploitation.
• Limited access to public resources creates opportunity hoarding.
• Sharecropping continues the same basic exploitation that was
occurring under slavery.
• Spatial segregation makes it easier to discriminate against blacks.

8. Race and Public Policy
• Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960
• Civil Rights Acts of 1964
• Civil Rights Act of 1968
• Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Section 2
• Designed to eradicate discrimination in voting.
• Prohibited any government from using voting procedures that denied a person the vote on basis of color
• Invalidated literacy tests and property requirements for voting.
• Invalidated poll taxes
• Section 4
• States where less than 50% of its voting age population was registered to vote or had voted in the 1964 elections
(triggering formula) were subject to sanctions.
• Section 5
• Additionally, states that fell under the triggering formula had to have preclearance from the U.S. Attorney General
or a federal district court before they could enact new voting laws.
• If a state fell under the triggering formula, the federal government would send in examiners who could require state
officials to register all persons found qualified to vote.
• Individual violators can also be fined and face jail time.
• Shelby County v. Holder (2013)
• Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974
• Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975
• Community Reinvestment Act of 1977
• Civil Rights Act of 1991

9. Race and Policy Issues:
An Introduction
• Critical race theory – theory of
jurisprudence that assumes that racism is
embedded in law and policy.
• Institutional racism – racism that is
ingrained in the very fabric of society and
cannot be eliminated without taking
aggressive action.
• “An indirect and largely invisible process
which can be compared with cloning and
the glass ceiling.”
• “Institutional arrangement that
disadvantages minority groups and it
largely goes unnoticed whether purposeful
or unintentional.”
• Symbolic racism – rather than having
overt racist attitudes, prejudice occurs on
a subconscious level that perpetuates
negative sentiments and beliefs toward
African-Americans.

10. Race and Policy Issues:
Housing
• Remember that geographic segregation was a persistent
problem in the south via informal means.
• Scholars discuss several studies which show evidence of this
problem:
• Audit Studies
• Black auditors told that no units were left for rent or sale, shown fewer
unites, offered different terms (larger deposits, higher rent, or higher
interest rates), and less likely to have phone calls returned.
• More likely to be channeled to “black neighborhoods”.
• Phone discrimination and “linguistic profiling” – black-sounding callers
less likely than white-sounding callers to obtain appointments and receive
call backs on real estate inquiries.
• Why is this so important?
• Because a home is one of the biggest investments an individual can
make and helps to increase their wealth (vs. income).

11. Race and Policy Issues:
Wealth
Median Household Income by Race and Ethnic Status (2007)
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census

12. Race and Policy Issues: Wealth
Blacks, Hispanics, and White Income Differential by Education
(2004)
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census

13. Race and Policy Issues: Wealth
and Education
Black-white and Hispanic-white Household Income Ratios:
1972 – 2005

14. Race and Policy Issues:
Education
Educational Attainment by Race and Ethnic Status (2005)
College Graduate or More (Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census)

15. Race and Policy Issues: Crime
• Incarceration rates rose dramatically between 1970 (200,000) to 2003 (1.4 million)
• In 2001, the U.S. had the highest incarceration rate in the world.
• 6.9 out of every 1000 people were behind bars
• Effects of Incarceration:
• Incarceration of African-Americans
• .7 percent of all Americans behind bars in 2000
• 2.1% of working males behind bars in 2000
• 1% white males
• 7.9% black males
• Black-white disparities in imprisonment have come to exceed any other racial differential in American society
(Massey 2007).
• Nearly 40% of those incarcerated are African-American even though they only represent 12% of the population
• Wages and Employment
• Incarceration obscures trends in wages and employment
• Criminal record creates additional burden for African-Americans
• Harder to get a job
• Lower wages
• Double stigmatization
• Being black
• Being a criminal
• Family
• Incarceration undermines:
• Marital stability
• Less likely to marry
• More likely to divorce
• Increases domestic violence
• Black women suffer to as a result of the loss of income from a partner.
• Child well-being
• Children likely to end up in the care of others

16. Race and Policy Issues:
The Death Penalty
• The Baldus Study, Equal Justice and the
Death Penalty
• 2484 murder cases between 1973 and 1979
• Showed blacks were 1.1 times more likely
to receive the death penalty
• The death penalty was 4.3 times more
likely to be issued when the victim was
white than if they were black.
• McCleskey v. Kemp (1987)
• Data:
• Data:
• 1988 – 1998:
• Of 133 defendants given the death penalty,
76% were of racial minorities
• 2007
• 1,804 White (56%)
• 1,345 Black (42%)
• 26 American Indian
• 35 Asian
• 10 Unknown race
• Total = 3,220

17. How Do Public Administrators
Fix These Policy Problems?
• Social equity – the fair, just, and equitable management of all
institutions serving the public directly or by contract; the fair,
just, and equitable distribution of public services and
implementation of public policy; and the commitment to
promote fairness, justice, and equity in the formation of public
policy.
• Whites seem to believe that the problems of racial inequality
have been solved and that mentions of inequality are those
“playing the race card.”
• Thus many American oppose programs that close the gap.
• Others use federalism as a reason to oppose federal action.
• How do public administrators fix this perception and these
problems?

18. African-Americans in the
Public Workplace
• Diversity – respect for individuals of different characteristics such as color, race, ethnicity,
gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, or way of thinking.
• Remember the problems the lack of diversity causes in the public workplace.
• Passive representation – the mirroring of society’s diversity in organizations.
• Active representation – ensuring that representation is meaningful in terms of influencing
decision making with the organization.
• Leadership Positions in the Federal Government
• New Deal
• “My people will not be satisfied until they see some black faces in high places.” – Mary McLeod
Bethune (1936)
• No African-American would be appointed to a high level position for nearly thirty years.
• The first cabinet level appointment would be in 1966 when Kennedy would appoint Robert
Weaver as the secretary of HUD.
• Up to this point, most African-American appointments were done to rally the African-American voting base of
the Republican Party.
• Political patronage
• Even when a substantial number of cabinet members were black (Clinton) there was no real
policy change.
• In other words, increased diversity did not lead to active representation.

19. African-Americans in the
Public Workplace
• Civil Servants in the Federal Government
• The readings detail the lack of diversity in the federal bureaucracy and how this came to
change over the course of time.
• For most of the history following the Civil War, blacks were relegated to a position of passive
representation.
• Menial jobs.
• Kennedy – Executive Order 10925 (1961)
• Prohibits discrimination in hiring or treatment in the national government based on race, creed,
color or national origin.
• The civil rights movement did not more inclusion of blacks in the federal bureaucracy.
• A rise in the number of African-Americans did occur, but an analysis of the Reagan,
Bush, Clinton, and W. Bush administrations demonstrates no attempts to change policy
at it pertains to civil rights.
• Remember:
• Administrators:
• Participate in and influence legislative policy.
• Create rules and regulations via rulemaking.
• Implement policy.
• Thus, increased diversity does not necessarily lead to active representation or a move toward
equality.

20. African-Americans in the
Public Workplace
• State Public Administrators
• Managers
• Charles, Joann. 2003. “Diversity Management: An Exploratory
Assessment of Minority Group Representation in State
Government.” Public Personnel Management 32: 561 – 577.
• Lower-level Employees
• Murray, et al. 1994. “The Role Demands of Minority Public
Administrators: the Herbert Thesis Revisited.” Public
Administration Review. 54: 409 – 417.
• Both
• Pitts, David and Elizabeth Jarry. 2007. “Ethnic Diversity and
Organizational Performance: Assessing Diversity Effects at the
Managerial and Street Levels.” International Journal of Public
Management. 10: 233 – 254.

21. Broader Implications of
Race for PA
• Alexander, Jennifer. 1997. “Avoiding the Issue: Racism
and Administrative Responsibility in Public
Administration.” American Review of Public
Administration. Pg. 343.