Abstract

     This article addresses the negative implications of neutrality in bureaucratic systems and public service. Neutrality employs a sameness approach that reinforces impartiality, invisibility, and indifference, resulting in what we term discriminatory blindness. After a brief illustrative review of neutrality in public service, we critique neutrality as an organizational impediment based on its veiled negative implications and disparate outcomes that fail to center the human experience and treat people based on how they are situated to ensure equity in outcomes. We propose a framework to forge ahead with eight actionable types of initiatives and learning constructs to raise the consciousness of public practitioners. We conclude with an action-oriented and learning-focused approach.

THE PROBLEM WITH NEUTRALITY

     Neutrality fortifies organizational impediments in public service and obscures an unequal relationship, detachment from disparate outcomes, and tensions between human interactions (Gooden, 2015). Frederickson (2010) asked, “for whom is the organization well managed? For whom is the organization efficient? For whom is the organization economical? For whom are public services more or less fairly delivered?” (Frederickson, 2010, p. xv). Scholars have challenged the ideal of neutrality based on its veiled implications for vulnerable, minoritized, and marginalized communities (Blessett & Gaynor, 2021; Frederickson, 1991, 2005; Gaynor & Wilson, 2020; Gooden, 2015; Guy, 2021; Herd & Moynihan, 2018; Hooks, 2013; Portillo et al., 2020; Stivers, 2015).

Neutrality veils a bureaucratic apparatus protecting the status quo of discriminatory legislative practices (Caiden, 1996; Gooden, 2015; Huber, 1991). The veil of neutrality refers to the belief that neutrality’s evenhandedness is altruistic and a public good. The veil obscures legitimized biases, internal processes, assumptions, and disparate outcomes. The veil of neutrality is referred to in the literature as a rationalized myth that masks disparities in the equitable distribution of public services (Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Portillo et al., 2020). Hooks (2013) argued White supremacist thinking and practice remain ingrained in the political foundations and systems within the U.S. She referred to this as “imperialist White supremacist capitalist patriarchy” which demanded obedience, subservience, submissiveness, and docile participation in an interlocking system (Hooks, 2013, p. 4).

CONCLUSION

     Public administration faces a shifting paradigm that challenges neutrality as a bedrock. In this research, we adapted a framework to forge ahead with eight actionable types of cultural competence initiatives and learning constructs to mitigate disparate aspects of neutrality in public service. This article focused on the performative illusion of neutrality as an organizational learning impediment that preserves and promotes disparities, inequities, and exclusion based on the premise of objectivity. It’s time to move beyond the performative illusion of neutrality to rebalance and recalibrate public service mechanisms. To disrupt the deep entrenchment of neutrality that veils how the evenhandedness of efficiency reinforces exploitation, control, power, and dominance, it requires us to disentangle ourselves and unlearn what we have been socialized to adopt as norms.

     Public practitioners must become skilled at navigating and disarming the ubiquitous minefields of public service once boots hit the ground. Development of cultural competence requires work at the individual, collective, and organizational levels embedded in empathy, ethics, engagement, and equity (Meyer et al., 2022). Starke et al. (2018) argued it is the ethical responsibility of public administration programs to educate and prepare students to become culturally competent administrators. By default, failure to prioritize cultural competence would perpetuate dominant biased perspectives. The development of cultural competence requires reconstituting long-standing traditional modes of doing business as value hierarchies. Such a reconstitution can ensure that organizations intentionally and meaningfully engage with proposed changes and articulate an ethical commitment and responsibility to raise the consciousness of public practitioners.