Camilla Stivers
Cleveland State University
Part I—The
Setting: Roots of
Administrative
Failure
Camilla Stivers is a Professor and
Distinguished Scholar of Public Administration
in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of
Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.
She is the author of Governance in Dark
Times: Practical Philosophy for Public
Service (forthcoming from Georgetown
University Press) and several other books.
She is a former associate editor of Public
Administration Review and spent 20 years
working as a practicing administrator in the
nonprofit sector.
E-mail: camilla@urban.csuohio.edu
48 Public Administration Review • December 2007 • Special Issue
“So Poor and So Black”: Hurricane Katrina, Public
Administration, and the Issue of Race
Does racism ever shape the way public administrators
make decisions? The story of Hurricane Katrina is an
opportunity to consider this neglected question. Discrimi-
natory government policies and processes over decades
ensured that African Americans were disproportionately
harmed by the storm and its aftermath. In contrast to
the literature on bureaucratic discretion, when the crisis
came, administrators at all levels chose to take refuge in
regulations rather than act creatively to save lives and
reduce misery. Images of desperate black New Orleanians
juxtaposed with massive government failures raise, even
for skeptical observers, issues of race and racism that must
no longer be ignored. The essay urges that we explore the
extent to which “masked” racism affects the practice of
public administration.
The Impartial Administration of Justice is the
Foundation of Liberty.
—Inscription on the Orleans Parish Courthouse
You simply get chills every time you see these poor
individuals … so many of these people … are so
poor and they are so black.
—Wolf Blitzer, CNN, September 1, 2005
I
t is impossible to explain the past fully. The mean-
ing of an event exceeds the possible causes we
might want to assign to it. “Reckoning with con-
sequences” is an inadequate means of coming to terms
with a catastrophe (Arendt 1958, 300). Understand-
ing, if it comes at all, will come from “dissolving the
known into the unknown”: making the event strange
enough, through reflection, to see it with new eyes
(Arendt 1953, 382).
Thinking in public administration relies heavily on
reckoning with consequences. Such thought patterns
are typical in emergency management, disaster plan-
ning, and risk assessment, as in other areas of gover-
nance. The goals of reducing risk and increasing the
effectiveness of government’s response to disasters
cannot be faulted. But means–ends calculations fall
short in the face of actual events.
It is now clear that a significant hurricane strike on
New Orleans was not unforeseen. The specter of “The
Big One” had loomed large for years among elected
officials and administrators. Hurricane-related disaster
plans from the federal government took up several feet
of shelf space in state and local offices. “Nobody ever
actually reads them,” commented the emergency
director for Plaquemines Parish (Cooper and Block
2006, 5).
In the aftermath, policy analysts have deemed Hur-
ricane Katrina a “low probability, high consequence
event”: not totally unanticipated but difficult, in the
abstract, to justify spending huge sums to reduce or
mitigate its effects (Von Winterfeldt 2006). The storm
may not have been unpredicted, but the real event
overwhelmed the operations of modern reason, both
before and after.
Following Arendt, in order to come to terms with
Katrina we must turn, for a moment, from reason to
understanding. To make the Katrina story at least
temporarily strange, this essay focuses on a neglected
factor in public administration: the significance of
race. The interpretation builds on Alexander (1997)
and Witt (2006). Both argue that public administra-
tion scholarship avoids the issue of race, and they
explore the consequences of that avoidance.1 Alexa-
nder notes the heavy reliance on law, professional
norms, and prevailing community sentiment to pro-
mote responsible administrative action. She points out
that scholarly discussions ignore the possibility that
any of these guides might be tainted with racist values,
assumptions, or practices. Witt argues that, although
it is ignored in the literature, race is a “tragic harbin-
ger” that continues to shape public administration in
theory and practice (2006, 37).
The responsibility issue that Alexander discusses is one
facet of a larger stream of work on administrative
discretion. A vast literature justi- Throughout American history,
fies discretion on normative and Throughout American history, the idea of race based on biologi-
practical grounds. Scholars argue the idea of race based on cal characteristics has set black
that a fractionated state requires biological characteristics has set people apart and justified their
the expertise, leadership qualities,
black people apart and justified exploitation. The belief that
and public spirit that career members of a certain race are
public servants contribute to their exploitation. The belief inherently inferior—less intel-
governance. Some have also that members of a certain race ligent, less ambitious—has ratio-
observed that no law, regulation, are inherently inferior—less nalized discriminatory treatment
or protocol is so narrowly and intelligent, less ambitious—has as fitting, proper, and without
clearly drawn that it does not rationalized discriminatory evil intent.
require judgment in use. Regard-
treatment as fitting, proper, and
less of emphasis, these arguments Shelby argues that a society’s
posit what McSwite (1997) has without evil intent. racist beliefs can infiltrate an
called a “man of reason” as the individual’s viewpoint and lead
one who exercises discretion: a him or her to actions that “per-
reasoning being, able to set aside prejudices, passions, petuate oppression … whether or not they are per-
and self-interests in order to choose the public- formed with a racist heart” (2002, 419). Beliefs,
interested course of action. This is exactly the sort of therefore, can also infect official decision making.
calculative reason that Arendt believed was inadequate Over time, patterns of discriminatory treatment
to the event itself. harden into structural differentiation, even after the
legal basis for it has been removed.
This essay argues that the story of Hurricane Katrina
suggests that racism may have shaped policy and For example, in his history of urban crisis, Sugrue
bureaucratic decision making and magnified the (1996) notes that 20th-century white Americans
death, destruction, and misery the storm produced. widely assumed that African Americans were less
Images of desperate black New Orleanians juxtaposed intelligent than whites, fit for physical labor, lazy,
with massive government failures raise, even for skep- sexually promiscuous, and prone to dependence.
tical observers, issues of race and racism that must not These beliefs produced and supported race-based
be ignored. Clearly, racism is not the only potential policies and practices in urban renewal, welfare, public
source of government breakdown in the face of press- housing, and government-backed mortgage lending.
ing need. The argument is not intended to be reduc- Such policies put in place racial discrimination that
tionist; it aims simply to introduce a neglected factor, persists despite the removal of official policy language.
worth pondering in a field whose track record on the
issue is mediocre at best. The focus on racism parallels Adams and Balfour’s
(2004) discussion of “unmasking administrative evil.”
Racism as an Ideology They draw attention to the ways in which technical
Racism is a loaded word and one not to be used rationality leads administrators to redefine evil as
lightly. Most American public administrators are good, as when Nazi administrators took pride in the
white, and few, if any, would agree that they are rac- efficiency with which they carried out the so-called
ists. They would insist that they hold no personal final solution to the Jewish question. Similarly, ad-
animosity toward any person or group. The argument ministrative practices can be infected with racism even
accepts this without question. It does not suggest that though individual administrators do not bear con-
during Hurricane Katrina administrative actions were scious animus toward people of color. In this respect,
warped by deliberately malign intentions. racism, like administrative evil, is masked. The current
essay stresses the extent to which racist beliefs, tacitly
According to powell [sic] et al. (2006, 60), American validated by surrounding administrative structures,
thinking “requires there to be a led administrators to redefine
racist actor in order for there to appropriate action and, in par-
be a racist action.” On the con- …administrative practices can ticular, to renounce the exercise of
trary, racism is as much systemic be infected with racism even discretion in favor of adhering to
as it is individual. This does not though individual the letter of the law.
mean, however, that we can
dismiss concerns about indi-
administrators do not bear Critics of the government re-
vidual responsibility. Shelby conscious animus toward sponse to Katrina have pointed
argues that racism is an ideology, people of color. In this respect, out that its differential impact
an “illusory” system of belief that racism, like administrative evil, was not a “natural” disaster but
works to maintain “structures of is masked. the almost inevitable result of
social oppression” (2002, 415). race-based policies that had
Hurricane Katrina, Public Administration, and the Issue of Race 49
 worked against African Americans over decades. Prior
to Katrina, the black poverty rate in New Orleans was
three times that of whites (Hartman and Squires
2006). “It is no accident that African Americans in
New Orleans [were] disproportionately poor” and
lived in areas of the city most vulnerable to storm
damage (Strolovitch, Warren, and Frymer 2005, 2).
As in other American cities, practices of racial segrega-
tion concentrated middle- and upper-income whites
in outlying suburbs (in New Orleans, literally on
higher ground) and blacks in the central city, where
flooding was the worst (Hartman and Squires 2006).
Conditions linked to past oppression played a major
role in people’s ability to evacuate: “[O]nly 17 percent
of poor whites lacked access to a car, while nearly
60 percent of poor blacks did” (Lavelle and Feagin
2006, 7). As a Brookings Institution report puts it,
“Blacks and whites were living in quite literally different
worlds before the storm hit” (quoted in Hartman
and Squires 2006, 3).The catastrophe of Hurricane
Katrina cannot be understood without reflecting on
the place of African Americans in American policy
and administration.2
Katrina and Public Administration
At the end of 2006, scholarly analyses of governments’
failed responses to Katrina focused on issues identified
by Congress and the White House: communications
breakdowns; information gaps; lack of coordination
across agencies, between levels of government, and
between government and the private sector; failure to
initiate action; and management failures (Ink 2006;
Jenkins 2006; Menzel 2006; Schneider 2005; Wise
2006).3 These well-informed analyses caution against
relying too heavily on restructuring and reorganizing as
remedies for what happened. For example, Ink notes,
I have a deep concern that many of the recom-
mendations would move our response and
recovery machinery toward an organizational
structure and response mechanism that is overly
complex… . [I]n a disaster, imaginative people
can work far outside the box in a way we would
not otherwise accept. I fear the current trend, as
reflected in the White House report, is to build
more boxes within which people are constrained
to operate. (2006, 802, 806)
This perspective reflect a long-standing theory-in-use
in public administration: No amount of structure—
laws, regulations, protocols, plans, chains of com-
mand, interagency agreements, or contracts—will get
governments to do what the public wants them to do
without the wisdom, good judgment, imagination,
initiative, commitment, responsiveness, and skillful
interaction of public servants. Administrators cannot
be made to do what the people want them to do.
Laws, plans, and chains of command provide crucial
guidance, but none is so unambiguous that there
50 Public Administration Review • December 2007 • Special Issue
is no room for interpretation. Ultimately, we have to
trust (and verify) that administrators will do the
right thing as best they can figure it out. The problem,
as indicated earlier, is that scholars take for granted
that public servants are able to set aside their
prejudices, biases, and emotions and to act as
“men of reason.”
Thus, the workings of government—its “perfor-
mance,” to use the current buzzword—hang on an
element that can be influenced but not controlled:
personal and interpersonal interpretation and action.
Two pillars in the literature document this amply and
persuasively: Michael Lipsky’s Street-Level Bureaucracy
(1980) and Steven Maynard-Moody and Michael
Musheno’s Cops, Teachers, Counselors (2003).
Lipsky observes that frontline workers are significant
because their decisions have a direct impact on the
lives of their clients and because they “make policy….
[Their] policy-making roles … are built upon …
relatively high degrees of discretion and relative au-
tonomy from organizational authority” (1980, 13).
Public managers depend heavily on the performance
of frontline employees without being able to intervene
decisively in the work itself.
Maynard-Moody and Musheno’s research documents
the practical texture of street-level discretion. The
work stories of police officers, teachers, and vocational
rehabilitation counselors reveal moral judgments that
sort clients into three categories: those worthy of ex-
traordinary help, those who get what the rules say and
no more, and those who get no help. Are they hard-
working and responsible, striving to overcome their
circumstances? Are they in the fix they’re in through
no fault of their own? These judgments are in constant
tension with the law, which sets out objective guide-
lines for how clients are to be assessed and treated.
Maynard-Moody and Musheno argue that much of
the public administration literature focuses on how to
constrain street-level workers’ judgments by means of
stricter rules and tighter supervision. They note,
This is especially true during a crisis…. [W]hen
discretion leads to scandal or public concern,
the inexorable response is to enhance bureau-
cratic control. In the aftermath of the Los Ange-
les police beating of Rodney King, more and
more police cars have video cameras installed to
increase supervision. Police abuse in New York
City has led to new guidelines for interacting
with the public, even including pocket-sized
script cards to prompt good manners. (2003,
13–14)
Both books suggest that racism plays a part in the
discretionary judgments of frontline workers, but
Lipsky is more pointed. He argues that major influ- promised food, water, and buses to evacuate
ences include (1) prevailing beliefs about the poor, residents at the Superdome had not been deliv-
such as “the deep conviction that ered by the Federal Emergency
poor people at some level are Management Agency (FEMA).
responsible for the conditions in On one hand, the bureaucrat’s The Louisiana governor’s request
which they find themselves,” and for 500 buses had been down-
(2) racism, which “affects the
job is to lighten the burden graded to 455. (Five hundred
extent to which public employees imposed by a capitalist economy buses hold roughly 10,000
regard clients as worthy” (1980, that inevitably leaves some people; there were at least twice
181–82). Lipsky argues that people at the bottom; on the that number at the Superdome
street-level decisions reflect con- other hand, American ideology alone.) Jeff Smith, the governor’s
flicting tendencies in American relies on the belief that people aide, “was told that someone at
society. On one hand, the bu- FEMA headquarters had ‘done
reaucrat’s job is to lighten the
who are at the bottom are there the math’ and it was determined
burden imposed by a capitalist because of some character flaw that we didn’t need 500 buses”
economy that inevitably leaves or inherent inability. (Cooper and Block 2006, 172).
some people at the bottom; on The governor’s request had gone
the other hand, American ideo- to FEMA in Washington, then
logy relies on the belief that people who are at the back to Baton Rouge, then back to FEMA, then to
bottom are there because of some character flaw or the Department of Transportation overnight desk,
inherent inability.4 along with a request for ambulances. The request
for ambulances was cancelled because, according to
In sum, public administration relies heavily on the one FEMA official, the Department of Transporta-
wise and unbiased exercise of discretion, yet there is tion “doesn’t do ambulances” (Cooper and Block
considerable evidence not only that judgment is often 2006, 187). Only then were the bus contractors,
exercised according to the personal morality of the some waiting thousands of miles away from New
individual bureaucrat but also that, when examined Orleans, given the okay to head for the city.
more broadly, there is a pattern to such judgments ● Andy Kopplin, chief of staff to Louisiana gov-
that is biased against African Americans and the poor. ernor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, spent the entire
day on Tuesday trying to get the Pentagon to release
In the Katrina story, a puzzling aspect is the bureau- five helicopters sitting idle at Fort Polk, in central
cratic lack of initiative (at all levels, not just the front Louisiana. When he finally got the last required
line): the failure to step outside the rules and act to permission at 5:00 p.m., a major at the base told
save lives and to succor those in dire need. This pattern him that by sitting on the tarmac all day waiting
is mysterious in light of a strong theme in the literature for orders, the pilots had gone over their permitted
on discretion: that, on balance, it is an asset rather than flight time (Cooper and Block 2006, 173).
a problem. The “legitimacy” literature has argued that, ● Small craft began massing on the edges of
by and large, public administrators follow their own the flooded area. FEMA refused to approve the
and their agencies’ sense of the broadest public interest volunteer rescue effort on the grounds that the situ-
(see, e.g., Wamsley et al. 1990; Wamsley and Wolf ation was “unsafe… . ‘No s——,’ muttered a boat
1996). The events of Katrina suggest a need to probe captain.” Members of the Florida Airboat Associa-
the extent to which, and the circumstances under tion repeatedly called FEMA to find out where to
which, personal judgments might be skewed by race deploy. FEMA did not call back (Horne 2006, 89).
bias. In this instance, many decided to adhere strictly ● The Transportation Security Administration
to bureaucratic rules. They decided to toe the line (TSA) insisted that all evacuees and their luggage
rather than help those in need. In New Orleans, those be screened before planes would be allowed to take
in need were disproportionately African American. off. After it became clear that x-ray machines were
inoperable because of lack of electricity, the TSA
“How Does This Work?” agreed to allow hand searches. Emergency food
Instances in the Katrina story of refusal on the part of rations in metal cans were confiscated because they
government employees to bend or step outside the might contain explosives. An eight-hour delay
rules—or indeed to act at all—are legion. Some have ensued while screening teams flew in from Orlando
been widely remarked on, others not. These stories raise and Houston. There was another prolonged delay
questions about the role that the image of New Orleans while the TSA rounded up 50 federal air marshals
as a city “so poor and so black” played in how public to ride the planes (Cooper and Block 2006; Perrow
servants decided what to do. A partial list follows: 2006).
● Dr. Mark Perlmutter, a surgeon from Pennsylva-
● Katrina hit New Orleans early on Monday nia, was ordered to stop giving chest compressions
morning, August 29. By late Tuesday afternoon, to a dying woman, on the grounds that he didn’t
Hurricane Katrina, Public Administration, and the Issue of Race 51
 have FEMA certification. He had spent the previ-
ous day on the phone trying to get the approval.
FEMA spokeswoman Kim Pease said, “We have a
cadre of physicians of our own” (Horne 2006, 90).
● At Charity Hospital on Thursday, a National
Guardsman told Dr. Kiersta Kurtz-Burke that the
area was too violent to evacuate her patients and
that the National Guard would return the next day.
Meanwhile, critically ill patients were being trans-
ported by helicopter away from Tulane University
Hospital across the street (Horne 2006).
● Seven hundred guests at a hotel across from the
Superdome were brought to the head of the line
of evacuees waiting to get on long-delayed buses.
Howard Blue, age 22, tried to get in their line.
The National Guard blocked him as they assisted
the well-dressed guests with their luggage. “How
does this work?” he exclaimed. “They [are] clean,
they are dry, they get out ahead of us?” (Ellis 2005,
10–11).
● Because FEMA had not planned for search and
roundup of the dead, bodies lay in the streets for
days. A FEMA spokesman said that “finding and
collecting these bodies was below the station” of
its disaster mortuary response teams. Setting up a
temporary morgue, which FEMA had anticipated,
took 10 days (Cooper and Block 2006, 225).
● Firefighters from other areas were sent to Atlanta
for training in community relations and sexual
harassment before they were sent to the disaster
area (Lukes 2006).
● A volunteer group of paramedics who came
on their own to help were turned away by FEMA
because they “didn’t have a special requisition num-
ber.” The group holed up in the house of a friend
and began collecting bodies, giving out medicine,
cooking and delivering meals, and finding gas for
emergency generators (Cooper and Block 2006,
257).
● A group of private sector chief executives, mem-
bers of CEO COM LINK, a secure communica-
tions network put in place to help the government
during emergencies, “sat by their phones for three
days waiting for [Homeland Security] Secretary
[Michael] Chertoff to call. He never did.” Mem-
ber companies of the International Bottled Water
Association called Homeland Security over and
over, offering free drinking water. “Nobody called
back.” The association eventually called on church
groups to help distribute 10 million bottles of water
(Cooper and Block 2006, 263).
● Douglas Doan, a Department of Homeland
Security bureaucrat, fielded an angry call from
Wal-Mart representative Ray Bracy, who had been
bucked from desk to desk all morning on Tuesday:
“The National Guard is looting Wal-Mart,” he
shouted. Doan realized that the National Guard
had broken into Wal-Mart because they had no
diapers, baby formula, and bottled water to give
52 Public Administration Review • December 2007 • Special Issue
desperate New Orleanians. Doan’s suggestion: Why
don’t we stop calling this looting and “start looking
at this as an unusual procurement.” He challenged
the Wal-Mart executive to keep the needed supplies
flowing and guaranteed reimbursement. Dur-
ing the next two weeks, Wal-Mart furnished not
only water and flashlight batteries but also tires,
chainsaws, and generators. Doan was sure the ar-
rangement would be praised as a shining example
of public–private partnership. Instead, Department
of Homeland Security officials were furious. Doan
was lectured by Janet Hale, undersecretary for
management, and lawyers showed up at his office
threatening legal action. Doan “silently typed out
a three-line statement: ‘I did it, … I would do it
again. The president would agree with it’” (Cooper
and Block 2006, 265).
● A few weeks later, Doan went to New Orleans
to try to help local restaurants survive. He worked
out a plan for them to cook 26,000 meals a day for
residents of St. Tammany Parish, where the power
was still off. The meals would replace peanut butter
sandwiches and canned beans being trucked from
Florida and Ohio at $14 a day per person. The
chefs came up with a menu featuring seafood pasta
and beef in red wine, at a cost of $13. But Under-
secretary Hale wouldn’t approve: the deal violated
long-standing contracts. Doan resigned (Cooper
and Block 2006, 266).
● In the weeks after the storm, Treasury Secretary
John Snow refused to approve a guarantee of New
Orleans municipal bonds, which forced Mayor Ray
Nagin to lay off 3,000 city workers. The adminis-
tration of President George W. Bush successfully
lobbied against a bipartisan congressional drive to
increase Medicaid coverage for storm victims and
to give Louisiana a share of federal oil and gas lease
income (Davis 2006).
● The Small Business Administration redlined
black neighborhoods in New Orleans so that most
of the applications from small businesses in the
hardest-hit areas were denied. The Bush administra-
tion blocked a bipartisan bill to provide emergency
bridge loans. Meanwhile, the agency has let large
corporations receive $2 billion in federal contracts
and excluded local minority contractors (Davis
2006).
According to a recent survey, in late 2006 the popula-
tion of New Orleans remained well under half its pre-
storm level. This suggests that more whites than blacks
have returned. Whereas before Katrina, New Orleans
was two-thirds African American, whites now make up
44 percent of the population and blacks 46 percent
(Nossiter 2006). Twice as many African Americans as
whites said their lives are still “very” or “somewhat”
disrupted. Almost three-quarters of black respondents
said they have had problems getting health care, com-
pared to 32 percent of whites (New York Times 2007).
Charity Hospital, the principal provider of care for the The Default to Literalness
uninsured, remains closed; some 75 percent of its pa- Any one, two, or three of the foregoing incidents and
tients were African American. Many people who for- statistics could be chalked up to isolated bureaupa-
merly received primary care through its emergency thology. Yet the vividness of the pattern suggests that
room have been ruled categorically ineligible for Medic- something besides red tape or lack of initiative was
aid and thus are unable to pay for any care or prescrip- involved. Why, on this occasion, did so many public
tions drugs (Rudowitz, Rowland, and Shartzer 2006). servants decline to rely on their judgment when it is
clear that, more often than not, under ordinary cir-
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Deve- cumstances, they do just that? Why did armed offi-
lopment and the New Orleans Housing Authority are cials turn back desperate black people straggling across
collaborating on a plan to tear down “existing low- a highway bridge at the border of a white neighbor-
income public housing and replace it with ‘mixed hood, threatening to shoot if they came any closer?
income’ occupancy developments” (Reed 2006, 1). Why did Michael Chertoff forbid Michael Brown to
Mayor Ray Nagin has boasted of go to New Orleans to be at the
how the economic market will front lines? Why is it that Presi-
steer redevelopment. Five of the Five of the six areas classified as dent Bush did not ask a single
six areas classified as most heavily question during a briefing the
most heavily damaged are
damaged are “project neighbor- day before Katrina hit New
hoods” in which poverty rates “project neighborhoods” in Orleans?
ranged from 60 percent to 80 which poverty rates ranged from
percent, unemployment was 60 percent to 80 percent, As indicated, there are many
above 20 percent, 80 percent of unemployment was above plausible reasons for such behav-
residents were renters, and the 20 percent, 80 percent of ior. But just as it was no accident
population was predominantly that African Americans lived in
residents were renters, and
black. Public housing, even the most vulnerable areas of New
projects with minimal or no the population was Orleans, so, too, did the dozens
storm damage, has been closed predominantly black. of documented examples of strict
and special barriers attached to adherence to bureaucratic rules
the doors (Logan 2006). The have a disproportionate impact
biggest chunk of redevelopment money is being held on the residents of those areas. Certainly, we can
up until Congress agrees to waive Louisiana’s match. imagine that none of these actions was animated by
President Bush has come out against a waiver, such as intentionally racist feelings. But why, then, were the
those granted to New York after 9/11 and to Florida few instances of creative response punished? The pat-
after Hurricane Andrew (Nossiter 2007). At the end tern cannot safely be ignored.
of May 2007, Louisiana’s Road Home program for
homeowners had given out only 22,000 grants out of One scholar (not in public administration) has sug-
140,000 applications, and FEMA has refused to re- gested that in crisis situations, bureaucrats often sum-
lease more than $1 billion of hazard mitigation money mon the courage to step outside the rules if they get
because Road Home “discriminates” against younger signals from the top that “this must be done.” There
residents by exempting the el- were very few such signals during
derly from a requirement that Katrina. No one sent the message
grantees live in their houses at One scholar (not in public to do what had to be done in
least three years (Eaton 2007). administration) has suggested order to save lives and reduce
that in crisis situations, misery. “Those just below …
Interviews with displaced New bureaucrats often summon the could not assume that their
Orleanians reflect considerable actions would be seen as ‘of
distrust of government, both
courage to step outside the rules course’ necessary.” To the con-
before and as a result of Katrina. if they get signals from the top trary, many of the incidents
Several African Americans cited that “this must be done.” There described here show just the
the dynamiting of the levees were very few such signals opposite: leaders demonstrating
during the great flood of 1927, during Katrina. in word and deed that nothing
during which selected poor com- was more important than the
munities were sacrificed to save rules. There was a widespread
downtown financial institutions (Barry 1997). One “default to literalness” (Molotch 2006, 32).
person stated, “I believe they do these things inten-
tionally … so they can flood out those Black neigh- It has been said that Katrina showed that when disas-
borhoods” (Cordasco et al. 2007, 277). Lack of citizen ter hits, Americans cannot count on help from the
trust in government is, of course, a severe barrier to government: “We are all on our own” (Cooper and
effective disaster planning and response. Block 2006, 306; Menzel 2006). But ordinary
Hurricane Katrina, Public Administration, and the Issue of Race 53
 bureaucrats are on their own as well. Some, such Dick
Doan or Marty Bahamonde (FEMA’s New Orleans
point man), did the right thing and let the chips fall
where they might. Too many others did not. How
many of them told themselves that those in deepest
trouble were there because of some personal failing—
some lack of ambition or intelligence—and therefore
deserved what was happening to them? How many
could have been spurred to creative action if leaders
had sent the message to save lives and sort out the
paperwork later? Some will say these are researchable
questions. Indeed they are. But questions must be
asked before they can be answered, and the field has
never asked them. It is hard to see how even the best
reforms of the emergency management and disaster
planning systems will help if we fail to address
them now.
Where Do We Go from Here?
In 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr., said that “genuine
integration will come when men are obedient to the
unenforceable.” He believed that laws and vigorous
enforcement were crucial; but a large part of what is
necessary to bridge the racial divide cannot be codi-
fied in law. It must be “written on the heart.” Some-
thing must touch people so that they come together
in “the conviction that all men are brothers” (King
1968, 100–101).
In public administration, we must end our avoidance
of the part that racism plays in hampering effective
public service. King’s call for obedience to the unen-
forceable is virtually identical to the notion that is
advanced in public administration classes and profes-
sional societies across the country: Administrators
must use their best judgment together with their
sharpest technical skills and deepest sense of what the
law demands—the best mind joined with the best
heart. This notion is, like racial integration, an unen-
forceable obligation, and one that cannot be solved by
diversity or preparedness training.
We have supposed that the cure for bureaupathology
is to hollow out the state and run government like a
business. The Katrina story suggests there is more to
it. Martin Luther King called white people to empa-
thize with African Americans. Cornel West (1993) has
said the challenge for America is “learning to talk of
race.” Can the public administration community learn
to do this? The time is now.
Notes
1. Alexander’s review of 10 influential journals
between 1990 and 1996 found that approximately
2 percent of articles dealt with the issue of race,
most focusing on workforce diversity. Alexander
found almost no consideration of how race influ-
ences, or should influence, thinking and theorizing
in the field. A review of five leading journals
54 Public Administration Review • December 2007 • Special Issue
between 2000 and 2006 found seven articles, five
of them on diversity and representative bureau-
cracy. Oldfield, Candler, and Johnson (2006)
provide a critical review of the public administra-
tion literature on social equity issues, including
race. Witt (2006) chronicles how the political
science and public administration literature has all
but ignored the centrality of race since the late
19th century. Alexander’s 10-year-old article has
never been cited by other scholars in the field.
2. Racism toward African Americans in government
policy and administration has a long history. The
prevalence of Jim Crow laws at every level of govern-
ment between the end of Reconstruction and the
civil rights era is well known. Yet judging from the
neglect of the topic in the public administration
literature, it has apparently been assumed that the
passage of federal civil rights legislation, racist
practices on the part of those in government have
declined or disappeared entirely. The argument here
is that racism has declined but has never disappeared.
Instead, it has become “masked.” For analyses of
racism in federally sponsored activities, see Jones
(1993) on the infamous 40-year Tuskegee experi-
ment, in which the federal government withheld
treatment from African American men in order to
study the effects of untreated syphilis; Angell (2005)
on present-day federal sponsorship of drug testing in
Africa and other third-world countries according to
protocols that have been outlawed in the United
States; and Gregory (1998) and Sugrue (1996) on
federal policies that supported racist real estate and
home loan practices that contributed materially to
the unsolved “urban crisis” in Northern cities. For
the effects of racist urban policies during the 1995
Chicago heat wave, see Klinenberg (2002).
3. Menzel observes that the story of Hurricane
Katrina exposes “fault lines of the past: race,
poverty, and politics” and offers “a golden opportu-
nity to describe, explain, and understand what
went wrong and what went right” (2006, 811).
4. As has already been suggested, in the American
story, African Americans are especially liable to be
judged in these terms. The Katrina story under-
scores this pattern: African Americans were referred
to as “victims” (i.e., helpless) rather than coura-
geous survivors; “looters” for taking diapers, milk,
and water from clerkless stores; and “refugees” as if
they were not U.S. citizens—images that reinforced
negative stereotypes (powell [sic] et al. 2006).
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