Public Agenda: American Discrimination: What Our Laws Reveal About Who We Are by Dr Shellie Bowman Sr

American democracy promises equality, yet our national struggle with discrimination remains one of the most enduring public administration challenges of the last century. Despite constitutional amendments, civil rights statutes, and federal regulatory protections, inequity persists across employment, housing, education, and government systems. While many Americans view discrimination as an interpersonal or cultural problem, public administrators know this truth: discrimination lives and dies in policy. It is enacted by laws, sustained by institutions, and corrected only through intentional governance.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 remains the cornerstone of federal anti-discrimination law, prohibiting employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin (42 U.S.C. § 2000e). Subsequent laws, such as the Equal Pay Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act, expanded protections to additional groups. Throughout all of them is a shared belief that a nation committed to liberty cannot tolerate prejudice as a structural force. These laws are not merely regulatory boundaries. They are moral declarations of what it means to be American.

Yet even with these protections, discrimination persists not only as a social phenomenon, but as an administrative reality. Public policy scholar Sue (2010) notes that discrimination functions both structurally and behaviorally, meaning it is woven into systems as much as it is carried out by individuals. In this sense, government is both the battleground and the correction mechanism. The policies we design determine whether discrimination is confronted or reproduced.

To read the rest of the article and Public Agenda achieves on Substack click on https://open.substack.com/pub/drshellieb/p/american-discrimination-what…

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