WHY POLITICAL SCIENCE?

Race and racism are often not central themes in political science studies—both theoretical and empirical. Yet race is central to the study of politics (Mills Reference Mills2015). The discipline of political science has its origins in the study of race. Jessica Blatt’s Race and the Making of Political Science challenges readers to grapple with the roots of social scientific inquiry as deeply rooted in racial thinking.Footnote ¹ The discipline’s origins stem from the “co-production of ‘race’ and the social sciences in the United States” (Blatt Reference Blatt2018, 145). Smith (Reference Smith2004) refers to the discipline’s study of race as akin to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, where many leading political scientists held racist beliefs or racial conceptions that shaped the political construction of non-whites. Yet, race-based analysis recognizing the pervasiveness of racism is inconsistent. What Mills calls the “irrational social hierarchies of the ancient regime” (Reference Mills2017, 3) is studied at the individual level in political science by examining “races,” with variable attention to the fundamental role of white supremacy in creating racial categories and the aggregate forces that point toward cultures, systems, or institutions that perpetuate racism.

Building on the tangible legacies of racism and the study of race in political science, the only two Black women to preside over the American Political Science Association led task forces on race in the discipline—a decade apart (American Political Science Association 2011; McClain and Mealy Reference Miller2022). These task forces point to the troubling pace of change in the field. In 1980, 2.4% of political science faculty identified as Black. The share of Black faculty rose to 5% by 2010. Yet, in 2019, Black faculty made up 3.86% of the field.

A key to full-reckoning with the racist origins of early political science is to examine the continued role of racism in society as well as in the discipline itself.

IT’S ABOUT STRUCTURAL RACISM, NOT RACE

George Floyd’s murder challenged the nation to confront racism as a social structure. Race, as supposed biological difference of human beings, is a concept that many recognize as an essential fact although it is a sociological process (Barzun Reference Barzun1937). Rather, racism—not race—is a worldview that developed a political order. We employ the definition of racism as “the infliction of unequal consideration, motivated by the desire to dominate, based on race alone” (Schmid Reference Schmid1996, 31). In short, racism is defined as “prejudice plus power” (Tatum Reference Tatum2007, 126). When combined with social power, racism creates systematic advantages and disadvantages that lead to the institutionalization of racist policies and practices. Structural racism expands this definition to stretch beyond individual actions or beliefs. Rather, structural racism is “a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforced ways to perpetuate racial group inequity” (Shim Reference Shim2021, 592).

By moving from individual approaches to a structural view of race-based inequities, we examine how the discipline as a whole think about—if at all—racism as a structural phenomenon. The 2020 uprisings presented a modern catalyst for political scientists to move beyond categorial forms of difference to grapple with structural racism. Thus, we examine how political science departments responded when systemic racism was highlighted through a major national event. By examining the self-reports of statements issued at George Floyd’s murder, we glean insights into how political scientists frame race-based realities and possible solutions to addressing racism. We seize an ephemeral opportunity to evaluate dominant frames about racism among scholars of political science in a time of racism’s increased visibility.

PUBLIC STATEMENTS, DISCURSIVE POWER, AND FRAMING RACISM

As performative and interpretive acts, public statements can be consequential interventions (Denzin Reference Denzin2002). Political science statements released after Floyd’s murder deployed discursive power, which we understand as the communication of ideas that transmits and produces power (Weedon Reference Weedon1996).Footnote ² This discursive power has the potential to fashion resonant and even dominant understandings of social problems (Ofoegbu and Ekpe Reference Ofoegbu and Ekpe2022). University statements can also serve as a proverbial contract that requires action to reduce institutionalized racism on campus via the construction of new programs and/or policies (Harper, Patton, and Wooden Reference Harper, Patton and Wooden2009; Harris Reference Harris2020; Hurtado et al. Reference Hurtado, Milem, Clayton-Pedersen and Allen1999).

In response to George Floyd’s murder, students across the world participated in social justice protests that called on their institutions to reduce racialized harm (Rim Reference Rim2020), motivating universities to issue statements (Garcia et al. Reference Garcia, Arnberg, Weise and Winborn2020). Yet, criticism of these statements pointed to the lack of commitment to action and narrow notions of racism (Garcia et al. Reference Garcia, Arnberg, Weise and Winborn2020; Hypolite and Stewart Reference Hypolite and Stewart2021). Scholars have used university statements to examine how public leaders have responded to racist incidents on and off campus (Jones Reference Jones2019; Morton et al. Reference Morton, Delmas, Giles and Bhakta2021; Ofoegbu and Ekpe Reference Ofoegbu and Ekpe2022). Statements can be used to downplay racism through the vantage point of privilege and color blindness (Jones Reference Jones2019) or fail to explicitly call out institutionalized racism (Cole and Harper Reference Cole and Harper2017).

Statements, then, reveal how political science thinks and talks about racism, highlighting subjectivity and making apparent inherent power relationships that systematically form the phenomenon they speak about (Foucault Reference Foucault1972). A nonbehavioral component of power influences or shapes people’s perceptions of their role in the existing world order.Footnote ³ Political science departments displayed discursive power by shaping, selecting, or amplifying the ideas, frames, and sources of authority that guide political decisions (Miller Reference Miller1990).

Political scientists are societally recognized interpreters of social problems, including through the promotion of particular issue frames. Framing refers to the efforts of organizations to portray information in ways that shape public understandings of problems, their origins, and solutions (Kosicki Reference Kosicki1993). Framing structures how communication encourages specific interpretations of a phenomenon through how people already make sense of the world (Entman and Usher Reference Entman and Usher2018). Frames signal the social relevance or irrelevance of an issue and offer indications of the status of societal power relations and contentious politics (Hall et al. Reference Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke and Roberts2019). New information spreads among elites to help refine the frames people spread through strategic and nonstrategic forms of communication. Framings of social problems have the power to shape responses to them, policymaking agendas, and mobilize collective action (Benford and Snow Reference Benford and Snow2000; Kingdon Reference Kingdon2010). Resonant frames related to racism can mobilize collective action even in inopportune political climates (Benford Reference Benford, Snow, Porta, Klandermans and McAdam2022).

As a discipline centered on the study of power, and perhaps structural power more concretely (Culpepper Reference Culpepper2015), we ask: what were the rhetorical responses to George Floyd’s life and murder by political science departments? Here, we are most interested in learning how rhetorical responses may or may not reveal how discursive power is deployed to frame both the problem of racism and responses to that problem. We ask if racism is described, or framed, as a problem deeply embedded in our social, political and economic systems, or as an unfortunate aberration. We hone in on this discursive distinction because how political scientists describe the nature of the problem will also determine their proposed solutions. In particular, is the problem one that requires a structural response, or is it one that requires a more superficial solution?

DATA DESCRIPTION

In the early fall of 2020, we issued a public call for statements from Political Science departments related to George Floyd’s murder. We started with a list of Political Science departments provided by the American Political Science Association. This list was the basis for the Association’s 2019-2020, Annual Departmental Survey of chairs of departments offering degrees and courses in Political Science and Government and the most comprehensive list of political science departments available. The list consists of 1,252 departments, including stand-alone political science departments and multidisciplinary departments that contain political science unitsFootnote ⁴.

We cross-checked the primary contact for each department using a departmental database provided by the American Political Science Association. We sent an email indicating that we were collecting “public statements made by Political Science departments in response to George Floyd’s death and the resulting protests occurring across the nation” for a research study. Respondents were invited to fill out a Google form indicating whether or not their department had issued a statement and, if so, asking them to upload the statement. We followed up with nonrespondents twice. If the first contact did not respond, we searched department websites to find additional contact information to email a department administrative staff member and verified whether the statement was available on the department’s website.

Our sample is much larger than similar studies of nursing associations and schools (Knopf et al. Reference Knopf, Budhwani, H. Logie, Oruche, Wyatt and Burke Draucker2021) and medical schools (Kiang and Tsai Reference Kiang and Tsai2022), which focus on the “top-ranked” nursing or medical schools. We collected 323 responses (26% of those on the APSA list responded). Just over half (53%) of our sample consisted of public universities, while 42% of departments on the APSA political science department list are public. We note that 27% of departments in our sample offered PhDs compared with 13% of the APSA list. We provide these comparisons for context, while also noting that the purpose of this study was to analyze statement content, rather than develop a predictive model based on a representative sample of which types of institutional factors led to a statement being issued. A fruitful direction for future research would be to conduct inferential analysis along these lines.

In our analysis, departments are anonymized, and all statistics are presented at the aggregate level. More than half of the responding departments indicated that they did not issue a statement. However, 144 departments shared their statements with our research team. Our analysis is based on these statements. We build on Mangala Subramaniam’s coding scheme (see Supplementary material) to develop a coding schema of key terms prior to reviewing the statements. We relied on two students to conduct semantic coding (Küppers Reference Küppers2013) of the statements. Then, we conducted intercoder reliability tests. After comparing the coding, we did another round of semantic coding to ensure consistency and produced a final dataset.

DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS

Recognition of Structural Racism

The majority of statements analyzed suggest that political scientists see the problem of racism in the United States as structural (Table 1). 66% of those departments that shared statements mentioned “systemic racism” or “institutional racism” explicitly, and more than 75% noted that problems that led to George Floyd’s murder were ongoing, not limited to the past. About a third (33%) also mentioned “White privilege or supremacy” in their statements.

Table 1. Degree to Which Departments Recognize George Floyd’s Murder As Part of Structural Problem

N = 144.

Thematic Terms

George Floyd, as a figure, and his death at the hands of state actors were clearly the touchstones for statements in the summer of 2020. About 64% of statements analyzed mentioned Floyd by name, and 60% mentioned his murder or killing of Black people (Table 2). More than half (54%) also mentioned the “police” or “police brutality.”

Table 2. Thematic Terms Mentioned

N = 144.

Black Lives Matter represents the social movement associated with addressing anti-Black systemic racism in the United States and across the world. Just 31% of the sample statements mentioned Black Lives Matter. The reference to collective action (Black Lives Matter) is much less the norm than a reference to a single individual (Geoge Floyd). Although most statements (78%) mentioned the word “Black,” “African American,” “Black Lives Matter,” or referred to Black people in some way, nearly 25% of the statements did not refer to Black people at all. “Diversity” in an ambiguous way was mentioned in 35% of the statements. We note that there is some overlap in these themes. Still, it is worth underscoring that among those that mentioned “diversity” in this ambiguous way, 12% did not mention Black/African American people or “Black Lives Matter” at all, and 20% of those that mentioned “diversity” did not mention systemic or structural racism.

We also note that about one-third of the shared statements mentioned racism as a problem in higher education, and a similar proportion mentioned racism as a problem in the field of political science (Table 2).

Commitment to Action

How do political science departments commit to action in their shared statements (Table 3)? The most frequent action step that department statements mentioned was holding a “facilitated discussion” about race (40%). Adding more course content, such as adding a class on race, was also among the most frequently mentioned action steps, with 24% committing to a course offering. About 1 in 5 departments in the sample (17%) mentioned “community engagement” as a part of their response. We find that commitments to community engagement vary widely. Statements mentioned community work they had previously supported, faculty service work in university committees, educating the community, listening to the local Black community, encouraging students to engage, and sharing expertise about civic engagement, among other references. References to community engagement were often vague, lacked details about the nature of engagement, and tended to be encouragements lacking clear support for this type of action.

Table 3. Commitments to Action

N =144.

A significant minority of departments also included terms in their statements that referred to recruiting (17%) and retaining or promoting (14%) faculty of color or experts on race and racism. About 6% mentioned increasing funds or devoting funding to confronting racism. Note that these action steps, perhaps considered the most robust with regard to forwarding a structural response requiring material resources, were no more likely to be mentioned than starting a reading group (15%).

Perhaps not surprisingly, those who mentioned systemic or structural racism were 1.5 times more likely to commit to action that included recruiting faculty of color and more than 3 times more likely to say they would increase funds to confront racism than those who did not mention systemic or structural racism, though as noted above, these types of material commitments to action were relatively rare.

AN INCOMPLETE RECOGNITION

The proposed solutions contained in statements are not commensurate with the structural understanding of racism encapsulated in statements. The gap between university efforts to appear diverse and the measures needed to be diverse (Jackson Reference Jackson2019) mirrors the gap between departmental efforts to appear to care about racism and measures to address it. This long-standing practice of recognizing racist histories of exclusion signals an incomplete recognition. Void of moving beyond recognizing the problem of racism and enacting institutional solutions to structural problems, void of engagement in societal efforts to subvert racism, political science is complicit in its continuity. This study provides substantive content to inform departures from the limited use of statements and collective disciplinary and institutional efforts to envision and enact systemic and polycentrically coordinated solutions to systemic racism.

Political science studies power. As such, it is unsurprising that many departments associated Floyd’s death with enduring institutional and structural racism. Many departments raised the issue that racism is a challenge in political science and the academy in general. In sum, the statements clearly identify racism as a structural problem. Yet, our analysis shows that departments recognize the issue but are less willing to commit to actionable items to address structural racism. These statements suggest that the status quo prevails even among those who study power. Political science departments do not have an all-encompassing agency. However, departments have some responsibility in shifting the discourse around the study of race and challenging racist practices.

Scientific societies, such as the American Political Science Association, can also take responsibility for coordinating action against racism among political scientists across institutional settings. Yet, scientific society statements tend to lack explicit commitments to action, few forward systemic understandings of racism, and only offer conditional support of activists engaged in social change efforts (Tormos-Aponte Reference Tormos-Aponte2022). Statements can be an empowering tool articulating diverse tactics to challenge the status quo.