Racialized Organizations in the Public Sector: Exploring Race and White Normativity

Abstract

Central to understanding race and racism is understanding how public organizations are racialized and create systems that maintain inequity. This paper seeks to address this area of scholarship by constructing a framework of racialized public organizations. The framework emphasizes that similar to how many public organizations are gendered as masculine, they are also raced as white. Specifically, underlying the functioning of many public organizations, is the concept of white normativity. By recognizing how organizations are embedded in white normativity, public administration scholars and practitioners can more effectively pursue racial equity.