Race and Social Equity

A Nervous Area of Government

Susan T Gooden

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317461449
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In this compelling book the author contends that social equity--specifically racial equity--is a nervous area of government. Over the course of history, this nervousness has stifled many individuals and organizations, thus leading to an inability to seriously advance the reduction of racial inequities in government. The author asserts that until this nervousness is effectively managed, public administration social equity efforts designed to reduce racial inequities cannot realize their full potential.

Chapters 2 and 8 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

1 Nervousness, Social Equity, and Public Administration

DOI: 10.4324/9781315701301-1

Americans must face up to their dream and decide whether they really mean it to be a reality.

—Jennifer Hochschild (1995, xii)

What does it mean to be nervous? Nervousness has both emotional and physical characteristics. It may present itself differently from individual to individual. Some of us display outward signs of nervousness—our palms become sweaty, we start pacing or fidgeting, our hands start to tremble. Others may exhibit few outward signs, but we recognize the internal signals—we feel a knot in our stomach, our appetite changes, we find it difficult to focus—our body clearly communicates to us that we are no longer in a comfortable state. While individual markers of nervousness may vary, it is a common human characteristic. We all become nervous from time to time, and particularly in certain situations when we are afraid. Although nervousness is an emotional reaction we all experience, it becomes problematic when it begins to interfere with our ability to perform our daily tasks. Normally, we think of nervousness as an individual emotion. But what about nervousness in organizations?

In this book, I contend that social equity, specifically racial equity, is a nervous area of government. Over the course of history, this nervousness has stifled many individuals and organizations, leading to an inability to seriously advance the reduction of racial inequities in government. Until this nervousness is effectively managed, public administration efforts to reduce racial inequities cannot realize their full potential. For public administrators, nervousness or fear of addressing racial inequities within the services a public agency provides is problematic. It interferes significantly with the daily task of public agencies to provide governmental services in ways that align with our guiding democratic principles as set forth in the U.S. Constitution. As days turn into weeks, weeks into years, years into decades, and decades into centuries, the consequences of failing to address this nervous area of government—racial equity in the distribution and provision of services—are compounded in significant ways, with very real societal implications.

Issues of equity and justice are fundamental concerns of public administrators, who constantly struggle to evaluate the country’s social climate and ensure equity in governance (Akram 2004). Such evaluation is unlikely to occur in a serious way if organizations are fundamentally too uncomfortable to directly engage the topic. The result is an important, taken for granted but unacknowledged, context of nervousness, which is debilitating to our public sector organizations and thwarting our progress toward achieving racial equity in governance.

A few years ago, I interviewed several senior administrators who were serving on a steering committee designed to examine racial disparities in Wisconsin’s welfare program. The work of the steering committee was quite labor intensive, and the subject matter was sensitive. Essentially, a state agency was dissecting the presence of racial disparities in its welfare program. As I proceeded with coding the interviews, I was struck by the number of times respondents used the term “nervous” to express their disposition toward this examination of racial disparities within their agency. Stated directly, one senior administrator said, “Examining racial disparities is a nervous area of government.” This book offers a direct examination of this idea and its implications. What is a nervous area of government? How extensive are racial inequities in American society? How is the nervous area of government manifested in individuals and organizations? What can we learn from public sector organizations that are engaging in this nervousness work? What challenges remain in the path ahead? These are the questions that shape the foundation of this book and define its contribution to the field of public administration.

Race and Social Equity: A “Nervous Area of Government”

A primary contribution of this book is the introduction of the term “nervousness” into the lexicon of public administration. While the concept of nervousness has not been systematically examined in relationship to public sector organizations, it does have important conceptual lineage. Merton (1952, 364) discusses the “dysfunctions of bureaucracies” in which “the positive attainments and functions of bureaucratic organizations are emphasized and the internal stresses and strains of such structures are almost wholly neglected.” Similarly, Merton cautioned against “structural sources of overconformity” where trained incapacity is clearly derived from structural sources (366). In his seminal work discussing dynamics of bureaucracies, Blau (1963) addresses how unofficial norms of groups within bureaucracies can serve as a powerful force toward their acceptance by all members of the group, regardless of individual attitudinal differences; certain behaviors are concealed, particularly if such actions are shameful; questioning provokes hostility and emotional reactions; myths develop to explain conforming behavior; and ostracism becomes the enforcement penalty for violations of basic norms. Downs (1967) discusses the important concept of “biased” behavior affecting all public administrators. As he conceptualizes it, the four major biases that an official is subject to are (1) distorting the information he passes upward to superiors; (2) exhibiting biased attitudes toward certain policies and alternative actions normally associated with his position; (3) a varying degree of compliance with directives, depending upon which ones he personally favors; and (4) a varying willingness to seek out additional responsibilities and assume risk within his position (77–78).

The conceptualization of racial and social equity, this nervous area of government, is grounded in an extended application of organizational justice. Issues involving organizational justice involve some person or group benefiting or harmed in a manner that is unfair. As Sheppard, Lewicki, and Minton (1992, 2) explain, “The justice phenomenon is pervasive in all organizations; however, justice is invisible until attention is focused on it by the experience or perception of injustice.” Much of the literature on organizational justice adopts a human resource management perspective that is largely focused on fairness concerns of employees. Such issues include employee recruitment and selection, employee conflict, employee compensation and promotion, and employee layoffs and downsizing (see, for example, Aram and Salipante 1981 ; Avery and Faley 1988; Clay-Warner, Hegtvedt, and Roman 2005; Ewing 1989; Feuille and Delaney 1992; Folger and Greenberg 1985; Greenberg and McCarty 1990; Tyler and Bies 1990). While these areas are important, understanding the nervous area of government involves an approach to organizational justice that is more systemic. It prioritizes the treatment and experiences of the publics the organization serves. The dominant concern is how the organization provides public justice rather than solely internal, employee justice. Public justice is the larger organizational value within which issues of social equity reside. Although public justice is similar to social equity, the latter is more concerned with the actual delivery of public services, whereas the former is more value-oriented.

As the model in Figure 1.1 depicts, the nervous area of government is conceptualized by a structural approach that includes both internal and external dimensions. Understanding how the organization effectively or ineffectively provides public justice requires an examination of four core areas that operate within a context characterized by nervousness when racial equity is the focus. These four areas are the external environment; senior public administrators; public servants; and organizational values. All of these areas exist within an overall context of nervousness and influence its intensity within an organization.

Figure 1.1 Conceptual Model of the Nervous Area of Government

External Environment

Motivators from the external environment often operate as the catalyst for examination of racial equity. Most external motivators originate from a political, legal, economic, or moral trigger. The political area includes racial-equity motivation provided by elected officials, when political candidates are elected on a specific platform or advance a specific racial-equity concern. Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative, discussed in detail in chapter 7, was largely motivated in the political arena by former mayor Greg Nickels.

The legal area includes laws, regulations, court decisions, and/or litigation concerns advanced by advocacy groups. The examination of racial disparities in the sanctioning of welfare clients in Wisconsin (chapter 5) provides such an example, as it was prompted by a complaint filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Milwaukee Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Economic triggers advance racial-equity issues on an agency’s agenda in monetary terms, such as a cost-benefit analysis, return on investment, behavioral incentives based on large funding sources, or improved overall organizational efficiency. As Norman-Major and Wooldridge assert, “A common focal point of research on the economic costs of social equity is the cost of poverty to society” (2011, 213). A Denver study on homelessness, for example, found that “The cost of services comes to about ten thousand dollars per homeless client per year. An efficiency apartment in Denver averages $376 a month, or just over forty-five hundred a year, which means that you can house and care for a chronically homeless person for at most fifteen thousand dollars, or about a third of what he or she would cost on the street” (Gladwell 2006, 103).

Moral triggers that land racial-equity items on an agency’s agenda include grassroots concerns, civic participation, media attention, or larger shifts in societal perspectives that wield organizational pressure. Legislation that was a direct result of the civil rights movement is an example of a moral trigger of racial equity. Within the model, these external triggers gain the attention of senior public administrators within the agency.

Senior Public Administrators

Senior public administrators largely operate as the concentrated source of tangible power within an agency. “Every organization has an individual or set of individuals at the top decision-making level who can exercise power simply by giving orders and making decisions” (Hall 1991, 137). They also control personnel and budgetary assets and their subsequent allocation within the agency. Although related, leadership and power are distinct. Leadership involves “the persuasion of individuals and innovativeness in ideas and decision making that differentiates leadership from the sheer possession of power” (137). As Selznick (1957) noted, the critical tasks of leadership involve four important tasks: definition of the institutional mission and role; institutional embodiment of purpose (e.g., deciding how the organization will use the means to achieve the desired ends); defense of the organization’s integrity (which involves a mixture of organizational values and public relations) ; and provision of order to internal conflict (among individual employees or subgroups of employees).

Specific to racial equity, senior public administrators communicate important messages and allocate resources that influence the overall value of public justice and the administration of social equity. They operate as important translators of the external racial-equity triggers. Their actions influence nervousness intensity and largely determine the acceptable “racial analysis” boundaries within the agency.

Public Servants

Public servants include the bulk of the agency’s employees—frontline staff, managers, and midlevel supervisors. In particular, actions of public servants involve daily implementation decisions that affect life-chances of the clients they serve and establish patterns of routine and service with important racial-equity consequences. As Lipsky explains, “They socialize clients to expectations of government services and a place in the political community. They determine the eligibility of citizens for government benefits and sanctions. They oversee the treatment (the service) clients receive in those programs. Thus, in a sense street-level bureaucrats implicitly mediate aspects of the constitutional relationship of citizens to the state. In short, they hold the keys to a dimension of citizenship” (1980, 4).

Policemen decide who to arrest and whose behavior to overlook. Judges decide who shall receive a suspended sentence and who shall receive maximum punishment. Teachers decide who will be suspended and who will remain in school, and they make subtle determinations about who is teachable. Perhaps the most highly refined example of street-level bureaucratic discretion comes from the field of corrections. Prison guards conventionally file injurious reports on inmates whom they judge to be guilty of “silent insolence.” Clearly what does or does not constitute a dirty look is a matter of some subjectivity. This is not to say that street-level workers are unrestrained by rules, regulations, and directives from above, or by the norms and practices of their occupational group … [however] professionals are expected to exercise d...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword, Samuel L. Myers Jr.
• Preface
• 1. Nervousness, Social Equity, and Public Administration
• 2. The Saturation of Racial Inequities in the United States
• 3. Nervousness Within Individual Public Administrators
• 4. Nervousness in Public Sector Organizations
• 5. Seattle's Race and Social Justice Initiative
• 6. Assessing Agency Performance: The Wisconsin Experience
• 7. Making Racial Equity Work Visible: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• 8. Assessing Racial Equity in Government
• 9. Beyond the Diversity Plan: Overcoming Racial Nervousness Within MPA Programs
• 10. Nervousness in a Comparative Context
• 11. Principles for Conquering Nervousness in Government
• Index
• About the author