PAD 6066 week 9
University of North Florida
Master of Public Administration program
PAD 6066 Capstone Seminar, Spring 2017
Civil and political rights
Public manager of the Week
photo source
*
Hiram Revels
U.S. Senator
*
Years ago I was preparing an undergraduate public administration lecture on equity, and decided
to look up who the first African-American Senator was…
…
…
OMG! Keep in mind that I was raised in America, did K-12 in America, did a PhD in America,
and I had no idea.1 This really hit home to me the importance of diligence in protecting our civil
and political rights (a discussion of the end of Reconstruction).
1. What can we make of Goodsell’s discussion of Mecklenburg County, NC’s Department
of Social Services?
Cell 1: Mission. Goodsell sees this is kind of vague: no ‘organic structure’ (which he seems
especially keen on). I do, though, see:
 A mission
“To provide services necessary to prevent or relieve economic and emotional hardship, and
to rally the community to improve the quality of life for its citizens” (p. 156).
Good sell’s not a fan. There is also, though:
 A vision
“To be the best in...service delivery, prevention initiatives, community relations, empowering
employees, promoting a family friendly workplace” (p. 157).
Goodsell notes that the last part gets ignored, instead what is remembered is “To be the
best...”
1
Though the other two degrees were in Australia, so I had no undergraduate gen-Ed American history requirement.
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
A purpose
Goodsell sums this up himself as “...fulfilling two imperatives. One is to provide the county’s
less fortunate residents with economic opportunities, i.e., give them a chance. The other is to
enrich – and sometimes to protect – their daily existence, actions that give them a lift” (p.
146).
Cell 2: Need.
Goodsell’s Table 5.1 (reproduced as Table 1, below) sums it up nicely:
Table 1
Economic and social inequities in Mecklenburg County, NC
Neighborhood A
Neighborhood B
2000
2006
2000
2006
Median household income
$25,446
$29,059
$92,132
$109,104
Persons receiving food stamps
11.7
22.3
0.1
0.4
High school dropout rate
14.5
7.2
0.7
1.5
Percent adolescent births
6.2
14.5
0
1.0
Percent substandard housing
4.9
2.9
0
0
Violent crime (% city average)
170
280
10
10
Source: Goodsell, p. 159
Cell 3: Reputation. Goodsell presents the case for this, and it seems convincing: Chamber of
Commerce, President of US, even that the organization was recommended for Goodsell’s study.
Cell 4: Motivation. Goodsell seems a bit inconsistent here. On the one hand he presents the
employee opinion surveys as evidence of mediocrity, yet for a social service agency I’d call it a
win that 80% or so ‘feel good about coming to work’, and ‘peers have a strong work ethic’ (p.
160. On the other hand his leader-centric presentation of ‘Jake the Great’ seems to make it
impossible that a worker would not be motivated by him.
Cell 5: Culture. Again with the limitations of the Jake-centric presentation, a few observations
seem possible:
 The Jake era is presented as having what I read as four major cultural touchstones:
 Business orientation (p. 164-5). This is also evident in the opening discussion of the
workflow of customers (p. 146-8), which could be right out of Woodrow Wilson (“make
the business of government less un-businesslike”) and Frederick Taylor.
 Savvy politics (p. 165-6). Granted, this related more to relations with other agencies.
 Advanced technology (p. 166-7). Ask Dumont about this one, I haven’t a clue.
 Community collaboration (p. 167-70). The cheesy illustration on page 169 illustrates this
nicely: this is an agency that understands the network it is a part of.
 Two imperatives. Another way of looking at this is to think of the two imperatives Goodsell
identifies on page 146:
 Giving people a chance. A helping hand (p. 146-9).
 ‘Giving people a life’. “...to grapple with the problem of family violence” (p. 150, and p.
149-54).
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Cell 6: History. Sexier than you’d think, and again ‘Jake’ is presented as making an effort to
identify and celebrate this.
Cells 7-9: Contestation, autonomy and renewal. The ‘Jake’ era, for all its reported pluses, also
certainly featured a strong hand at the top, with all this implies for contestation, etc. The recent
leadership change, too, is hard to interpret, as some elements of the agency are reported as being
reluctant to accept the new appointee at the top.
2. Is democracy an important value in public management?
A societal approach. For our purposes a first approach is that of Bresser Pereira, which is more
or less a societal approach: is democracy good for the society in which public managers manage?
To we Americans this seems a non-issue, but consider this, from two Chinese scholars:
The feudalism based on Confucianism has governed the Chinese for more than 2000 years.
Under this circumstance, it is difficult for most Chinese to form the habit of doubting the
legitimacy of the government. Instead, they believe in it without any doubts, and the
government has become accustomed to considering themselves as the ‘parents’ of the people.
(Wang and Gu 2002, p. 205)
So for Wang and Gu, Chinese people don’t like democracy, instead follow their government,
without question (and this is a country that has not known democracy for millennia). Amartya
Sen would disagree, and instead claims that a desire for freedom is universal. He has argued that
It is hard to make sense of the view that the basic ideas underlying freedom and rights in a
tolerant society are ‘Western’ notions, and somehow alien to Asian, though that view has
been championed by Asian authoritarians and Western Chauvinists. (1997, p. 39)
Another perspective on democracy is provided by the annual Latinobarómetro poll (source), see
page 9, which shows democracy preferred 54-15% over an authoritarian government. A second
question (presented on page 19) restates the question in the form commonly attributed to
Winston Churchill (source). 75% of respondents throughout Latin America agreed that
democracy is better than any alternative. So it seems pretty popular, even in a continent that has
struggled with democracy.
A social-liberal perspective. Bresser Pereira’s answer regarding the desirability of democracy is:
unabashedly yes. He offers a number of reasons for this (2004, pp. 42-8, this is in the chapter
distributed for week four)), which I’ll read as related to capitalism (or market economics), and
even apply this to Adam Smith’s famous, 1776 justification of market economics: harnessing
individual initiative as a way to produce better public outcomes, which we saw in week four.
Note especially that this classic defense of capitalism justifies capitalism through its benefit to
the broader society. The capitalist:
“..is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no
part of his intention… By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the
society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.” (p. 477)
As we saw in week four, too, Smith also explicitly identified at least four roles for government
(and so by definition: restricting individual liberty), and implicitly two more:
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1. justice
2. defense
3. major infrastructure
4. public goods (i.e. education)
5. combating monopoly (see page 74)
6. social programs that help the poor:
“Servants, labourers and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every
great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be
regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy,
of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides,
that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share
of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, cloathed and
lodged.” (page 88)
So my point here is that democracy may be essential to successful capitalism, as it both helps
distribute the benefits of the massive production that market individualism brings forth, and as a
result also reduces the costs of the first two of Smith’s roles of government: justice and defense.
A happy population requires much less policing to keep people secure in their possessions.
Public manager approach. A third way of looking at the role of democracy in public
management is to do so from the public manager’s perspective. I’m thinking here of the classic
‘politics-administration dichotomy’ that came out of Woodrow Wilson’s seminal 1887 essay on
the study of (public) administration. The origins of the alleged dichotomy are in this quote:
“The problem is to make public opinion efficient without suffering it to be meddlesome.
Directly exercised, in the oversight of the daily details and in the choice of the daily means of
government, public criticism is of course a clumsy nuisance, a rustic handling of delicate
machinery. But, as superintending the greater forces of formative policy alike in politics and
administration, public criticism is altogether safe and beneficent, altogether indispensable.
Let administrative study find the best means for giving public criticism this control and for
shutting it out from all other interference.” (Wilson 1887, page 215)
In other words, the public is, as Wilson put it elsewhere, “rigidly unphilosophical” (page 209), or
perhaps more kindly: inadequately trained to get involved in the details of what the public
manager does. This is not to say the public manager can do anything s/he wants. Even the quote
above tasks the public with ‘superintending the greater forces of formative policy’, which seem
kind of important, even if the citizen doesn’t get to vote on the water/cement/aggregate ratio of
concrete on government construction projects! Wilson also declares for political accountability:
“Steady, hearty allegiance to the policy of the government they serve will constitute good
behavior. That policy will have no taint of officialism about it. It will not be the creation of
permanent officials, but of statesmen whose responsibility to public opinion will be direct
and inevitable.” (page 216)
But then even this quote goes on to separate the mechanics of governance from politics:
“Bureaucracy can exist only where the whole service of the state is removed from the
common political life of the people, its chiefs as well as its rank and file. Its motives, its
objects, its policy, its standards, must be bureaucratic.” (ibid)
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Public managers were to be
1) To quote Terry Cooper: “The public administrative role is viewed as derived from that of
the citizen, thus making administrators representative citizens, professional citizens,
fiduciary citizens, or citizens in lieu of the rest of us” (Cooper 2006, p. 397); but
2) accountable to the people through the elected representatives of those people, not
directly.
3. How important is 'equality' in American democracy?
Applied to the US context, we’ve seen in this class that when the best data available is used to
compare the US to other, actually existing societies, the US is very well-governed. However the
question of equality suggests that an efficient, effective and economical public agency would not
be enough if it did not also serve citizens in some sort of equitable fashion. Complete equality
isn't the issue. As indicated in Table 2, and in the figure on the next page (source), the US is a
very unequal
Table 2
society in terms of
Various, vaguely related (!) indicators2
income, even after
Civil
Economic
Hofstede’s
Social
Inequality
government social
freedom freedom Individualism expenditure
welfare programs.
G7+
Also, it is worth
keeping in mind
that the freedom
reflected in Table 2
was not enjoyed by
all. Within the US,
women, a handful
of racial and ethnic
minorities have
especially lagged.
Is this fair? Or put
another way: do
those folks who
pine for the good
ol’ days (say of the
1950s) forget that
women had few
options in life
outside the home,
US
Australia
Canada
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Sweden
UK
1
1
1
1
1
1.5
1.5
1
1
7.96
7.90
7.95
7.32
7.46
6.90
7.46
7.28
7.81
91
90
80
71
67
76
46
71
89
16.2
16.0
16.9
28.4
25.2
24.9
18.7
27.3
20.5
40.8
35.2
32.6
32.7
28.3
36.0
24.9
25.0
36.0
2
6.5
2.5
5.5
6.18
6.65
6.51
6.62
38
20
48
39
-----
55.0
41.5
36.8
43.7
4.5
4.0
6.0
5.0
5.84
6.06
6.15
4.32
14
20
20
12
-----
31.2
42.9
37.8
43.4
BRICs
Brazil
China
India
Russia
Laggards
Pakistan
Nigeria
Vietnam
Venezuela
2
Sources: Freedom House’s 2011 Freedom in the World Report. Freedom House rates countries in terms of civil
and political freedom, on a 1 (free) to 7 (unfree) scale. The number presented here is the average of these two scores.
Fraser Institute and Cato Institute’s 2010 Economic Freedom of the World Report. The data is on a 1-10 scale, with
10 equal to more economic freedom (i.e. less government ‘meddling’). The data are for 2008. Geert Hofstede’s
Cultural Dimensions index. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Statistics Portal. The figure
is 2007 public social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP, and includes spending on old age, survivors,
disability, health, family, unemployment, housing, and other social areas. United Nations Development Program’s
2010 Human Development Report. The numbers are a Gini coefficient, which measures inequality. Higher scores
indicate more inequality. The data can be found on pages 152-5.
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and blacks suffered from Jim Crow
segregation, as well as the continued
effects of the legacy of disadvantage
inherent in slavery?
4. Who are we referring to when
we talk about inequality, diversity,
and all that?
As Walter Broadnax, a big cheese in
academic public administration, put
it, "the 'beef' here is found in the
discussions of race and gender"
(2000, p. xviii). See relevant data in
Table 3.
Table 3
American disadvantage
All Black Hispanic Asian Men Women
100
13
15
4
49.2
50.8
Share of US population (%, 2010)
22.5
2.4
48.9
51.1
Share of Florida population (%, 2010) 100 16.0
719
591
537
855
800
634
Median weekly earnings ($, 2008)
5.7
9.8
7.6
4.5
4.8
4.9
Unemployment rate (%, mid 2008)
12.3 24.5
21.5
10.2
-30.5*
Poverty rate (%, 2007)
100
9
4
-46
54
ACT participation (2008, % of total)
100
9.6
6.9
5.1
44
56
UNF student body (%, 2010)
100
8.3
13.7
8.6
46.5
53.5
UF student body (%, 2010)
100 36.6
16.4
0.9
80
20
New AIDS cases (%, 1985-2005)
17.0 18.1
35.1
---No health insurance (% 2006)
770
2483
947
-1406
136
Inmate population (2007, per 100,000)
Sources: The World Almanac 2009; UNF Fast Facts; UF Office of Institutional Planning & Research.
Notes: * Head of household, no male present.
5. Representative bureaucracy and equity
Another way of putting the question of “Who are we referring to” is to look at who is being
discriminated against, and what the implications of this is. 'Representative bureaucracy' was a
precursor movement to what is now referred to as affirmative action, anti-discrimination, social
equity policy, and such. On the broader topic of discrimination, Fred Pincus (1996) draws
important distinctions:
 Individual discrimination -- "refers to the behavior of individual members of one
race/ethnic/gender group that is intended to have a differential and/or harmful effect on the
members of another race/ethnic/gender group."
 Institutional discrimination -- "refers to the policies of the dominant race/ethnic/gender
institutions and the behavior of individuals who control these institutions and implement
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

policies that are intended to have a differential and/or harmful effect on minority
race/ethnic/gender groups."
Structural discrimination -- "refers to the policies of dominant race/ethnic/gender institutions
and the behavior of the individuals who implement these policies and control these
institutions, which are race/ethnic/gender neutral in intent but which have a differential
and/or harmful effect on minority race/ethnic/gender groups." If low income correlates with
a minority group, this group will suffer all the problems faced by the poor.
Cultural affinity -- this is also not unlike the 'glass ceilings' that women face, in that the
cultural minority can 'make it' if s/he adopts the cultural mores of the dominant group. One
has to 'act white', to be blunt. Pincus also gives the bank loan officer example, where
minorities have been shown to be less likely to receive bank loans from loan officers of a
different race. Note that this goes beyond intentional discrimination, and suggests, instead, a
more subtle, subconscious discrimination.
Logic of representative bureaucracy. The notion of representative bureaucracy argues that there
is a strong logic to having a bureaucracy that mirrors the society that it 'serves':
 Fairness: Government jobs are jobs, and everyone should be able to benefit from
these. Equally important, everyone has a right to public services, and a representative
bureaucracy makes less likely either the conscious or sub-conscious discrimination described
by Pincus, above (see recent problems in Ferguson, MO).
 Representativeness: Citizens are likely to feel closer to a government that looks like them.
 Effectiveness: most important, as one of the early writers on representative bureaucracy
notes, better administration is likely to result if the policy makers "composition included the
memory of misery, hunger, squalor, bureaucratic oppression, and economic insecurity"
(Kelsall 1955, p. 192). There are, indeed, some things you can’t quite learn from a book.
 Justice: righting past wrongs. Barack Obama addressed this in his 'speech on race'.
Elements of the issue:
 Anti-discrimination. Discrimination is something which hopefully most people would agree
needs to be combated. Surely everyone has a right to not be treated unfairly just because of
their race, gender, age, national origin, and such.
o Note that this can also be seen as an efficiency issue, as if the US were to restrict its
government only to white men, it would be able to draw on only about 36% of the
population (50% are women, and roughly 7% both black and Hispanic males). Why
overlook all that talent?
o For an excellent discussion, see Colin Powell's 2008 endorsement of Barack Obama.
 Comparable worth. Equal pay for equal work.
o Sexual harassment. This includes prohibitions against sexual harassment. Henry is
probably wrong in implicitly defining this as "a comment or act made or permitted by a
coworker in the workplace... which is interpreted by another coworker to have sexual
overtones, and causes discomfort in, or is offensive to, the worker" (2012, p. 306).
Instead, this is generally understood as a reasonable person (p. 307) must interpret the act
to have sexual overtones, and cause discomfort.
 ADA. The Americans with Disabilities Act has been interesting for a number of reasons.
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o

First, it has imposed enormous costs on governments, often requiring communities to
facilitate the use of public facilities by disabled people, regardless of whether the
community has people with the particular disability who want to use the service.
o There has also been a long process of court cases that have delineated what is, and what
is not a disability. As Henry notes (p. 301), employers have won 92% of these cases so,
surely, it hasn’t imposed too many costs on US society?
 Still, the process has been abused. Fighting those 92% of cases was expensive for
each of the individual employers, and the 8% that win expands the definition of who
is considered disabled. In other words, this has gone far beyond the blind, the deaf,
and those with mobility problems that most people think of when 'disability' is raised.
o Despite all of these concerns, again American society has opened itself to utilizing a
much greater percentage of its human capital.
Affirmative action. Conscious action (through preferences) to counteract disadvantage.
Note this represents a significant modification of the merit principle. People will not
necessarily be hired solely on the basis of merit, but we will also consider the contribution
that public employees can make to the 'representativeness' of the public service.
6. Markets and social equity
Markets and equity. The fundamental problem with markets as a mechanism for bringing about
social equity (which might be thought of realistically as simply reducing inequalities), and as a
mechanism for achieving social justice (which might be thought of realistically as simply equal
treatment), is that while in politics each person has a vote, in markets each dollar has a vote.
Inheritance and inequity. Markets act to subvert social equity and social justice in other
ways. The child of an affluent family will be more likely to be prepared for school than a child
of less affluent parents, will go to a better school (parents can afford it!), be socialized into going
to college and helped along through that process by parents who know what college is (!), and
will therefore enter the workforce with better credentials than the child of poor parents. Add to
this family (and school) connections in the workplace.
Markets and efficiency and empowerment. Within the limitations of purchasing power they have
at their disposal, to the extent that the poor are able to make their own choices in free markets,
they are empowered. They may be hurt, as these free choices might not be in their best interests,
but they are empowered, and (within limits!) who's to say what is in their best interests?
Critics of equity policy. There are a set of conservative critiques of social equity that hold that
welfare safety nets too finely woven can discourage initiative among the poor, not to mention be
implemented in a fashion that creates welfare 'traps': rules whereby earned income counts against
benefits, so the minimum wage worker might lose half of that $7-8 dollar wage if s/he works, or
may lose access to subsidized child care, health benefits, and such. Bi-partisan efforts have been
made to remove many of these traps (source). As well, given that social spending in the US is
lower than in pretty much every other rich country, it is hard to argue that our system is a) out of
control and b) a competitive disadvantage. Indeed, to the extent that we fail to lift more kids out
of poverty and so increase the odds that they can contribute to society, we are creating a
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competitive disadvantage. For some other dimensions of the issue, see cities, middle class
welfare, and continued poverty, a decade after the bipartisan reforms mentioned earlier).
7. Which is more important, equal treatment (call it equality of process), equality of
outcomes, or equality of opportunity?
Equal treatment. This can be seen as an anti-discrimination issue: all else equal, everyone should
have a fair go despite their race, gender, ethnicity, disability, etc.
 Preference. The issue can be a bit more complicated than this, though. Given Lyndon
Johnson’s assertion (below) that meritocracy needs to be seen more holistically than simply
at the point of application for a job, disadvantage suffered by people prior to the point of
application might be compensated for by preference at the point of application. Children
denied access to adequate primary education who fail to gain entrance to university can
hardly be seen as lacking merit. They have instead been denied opportunity. Note, too, the
third bullet under ‘representative bureaucracy’ at the end of page 7: diversity of perspective
can be a positive attribute in public policy.
 Reverse discrimination. Yet if this preference is done too bluntly, poor kids in the
‘advantaged’ group (i.e. poor white/Asian kids), who themselves enjoyed no privilege, might
suffer from the preference given to all members of the ‘advantaged’ group. This reality was
recognized by no less an authority than then Presidential candidate Barack Obama:
“Most working- and middle-class white Americans don't feel that they have been
particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience - as far
as they're concerned, no one's handed them anything, they've built it from scratch.
They've worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or
their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and
feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition,
opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my
expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they
hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a
good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they're
told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced,
resentment builds over time.
“Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren't always expressed in
polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a
generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition.
Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show
hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of
racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere
political correctness or reverse racism.
“Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments
distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze - a corporate culture
rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a
Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor
the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to
label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in
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legitimate concerns - this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to
understanding.” – Speech on race, 18 March 2008.
Equality of outcomes. Redistributive policies apply here. For example, some kids come into this
world making the mistake of choosing poor, even dysfunctional parents. Despite this poor
judgment, societies that care about equal opportunity will work to see that the kid is provided
with, if not an education equal to that received by kids who chose richer parents, at least an
education that meets a basic level of competence. This will be done by taking money from the
family of the kid who chose the rich parents, and distributing it to the poor kid’s family, often
beyond education to include income support, health services, etc (source).
 The golden egg syndrome. At some level, there is a limit to how much can be taken from the
rich to give to the poor, as the rich (or, more accurately: the entrepreneurial, to distinguish
between the productive rich and unproductive inherited wealth) will stop working or
investing in that society. Given that the US is one of the least taxed of the rich countries, and
the other, higher-taxed rich countries are both rich and higher-taxed, there is little danger of
US taxes leading to this in the US. However, the point needs to be stated: there are limits!
 Practical considerations. There are practical considerations for wealthier taxpayers. If we
invest $100,000 in a poor child who becomes a productive member of society, it will pay off
handsomely in the long term, if that child pays $10,000 a year in taxes for 40 years.
Equality of opportunity. The ‘adequate degree of opportunity for all’ reflects ‘positive
freedoms’: it isn’t enough for society to protect one from threats to freedom. It may also be
necessary to give folks the opportunity to pursue freedom. As an example, Amartya Sen’s idea of
freedom is not that of the American Libertarian. He asserts that freedom is meaningless if it
cannot be exercised, and so favours a capabilities approach to the topic. Here, for the child of a
poor, illiterate person in a village in rural Ethiopia, freedom requires the resources to exercise it
(2009, pp. 231-5). As President Johnson in 1965 (video, start at 12:00) famously put it:
“You do not wipe away the scars of centuries by saying: Now you are free to go where you
want, and do as you desire, and choose the leaders you please. You do not take a person
who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line
of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe
that you have been completely fair. Thus it is not enough just to open the gates of
opportunity. All our citizens must have the ability to walk through those gates.”
8. Is (female) gender still a relevant diversity concern?
See, again, Table 3.
9. Is sexual orientation now a relevant diversity concern?
 Changes in the ‘big mo’? The momentum towards normalization of this issue seemed
inexorable 10-15 years ago, as gay rights activists made policy gains through the courts. But
a backlash occurred, as various state constitutional amendments defined marriage as between
a man and woman. On the other hand, the Pentagon allowed gay troops to serve openly
(source), joining most of our ‘free world’ military allies (source). More recently, in
Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruled that states cannot prohibit same sex
marriages (source). Some judges are refusing to accept the Supreme Court’s ruling (source).
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



Consensus: no violence. There does seem to be agreement that gays should not be subject to
physical violence, as even Christians generally prefer not to literally follow God's admonition
that gays "must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads" (Leviticus 20:13).
Consensus: legal (kind of). There also seems to be consensus that people should not be
imprisoned for homosexuality. The recent Supreme Court decision in Lawrence and Garner
v. Texas struck down Texas's anti-sodomy law, along with those of seventeen other states.
 Granted, the decision was 6-3 (Scalia, Thomas and Rehnquist dissenting).
 But while Scalia lamented that "Today's opinion is the product of a Court... that has
largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda
promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium
that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct", even…
 …Thomas admitted in his dissent that "I write separately to note that the law before the
Court today 'is ... uncommonly silly'...If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I
would vote to repeal it. Punishing someone for expressing his sexual preference through
noncommercial consensual conduct with another adult does not appear to be a worthy
way to expend valuable law enforcement resources."
Opposition to normalizing sexual orientation is multi-faceted:
 Religious: Leviticus 20 clearly labels men lying with men as an abomination.
 Family-based: it is argued same sex marriage would weaken the family.
 Damages the children. Evidence is weak, though (source).
 Damages marriage itself. It is more often argued that same-sex marriages will
weaken heterosexual couples and their children. The mechanism through which
this would occur has not, to the best of my knowledge, been specified. Nor have
advocates of this position rushed to produce studies showing a breakdown of the
family in those jurisdictions in the US and internationally where same sex unions
have been around for a while (since 2001 in the Netherlands, with civil unions
allowed in Denmark since 1989 – source for some data).
 Financial. In Vermont, critics argued that civil unions would add considerably to
personnel costs of government, what with all those health benefits that would be
provided to partners of employees in civil unions. A UVM-MPA student who
worked for the state's Joint Fiscal Office, reckoned that it would cost the state
government only about $5m a year. Still seemed like a lot to me, and this was a very
small (600,000 people) state!
 Pragmatic. Some argue many of the benefits accruing to married couples are not
predicated on marriage, but on child-rearing. Here, you'd think the ideal solution
would be to rejig family benefits to those couples rearing children. This pragmatic
approach was what the Indiana Supreme Court opted for, in its Morrison v. Sadler
ruling. After all, why should Dumont and I get a married tax benefit?
Cultural differences. Finally, for all the ‘progressive’ stance of those sympathetic to nonheterosexual orientations in ‘the west’, elsewhere the practice is often less accepted. Islam,
Catholicism, Latino culture, and such are much less welcoming.
10. Should diversity and equal opportunity be expanded to include inequality itself,
without these race/gender proxies?
As prominent journalist Clarence Page recently reported,
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“43.8 percent of African immigrants had achieved a college degree, compared with 42.5 of
Asian-Americans, 28.9 percent for immigrants from Europe, Russia and Canada and 23.1
percent of the U.S. population as a whole.” (2007)
As a result of data like this, Page argues that America needs “to revisit the question of diversity.
Unlike our system of feel-good game-playing, we need to focus on the deeper question of how
opportunities can be opened to everyone who was left behind by the civil rights revolution. We
tend to look too often at every aspect of diversity except economic class.” (2007)
Elements of the issue
 Class-based politics. Why does much of the world feature class-based (labour and socialist)
political parties, yet in the US, former President Bush (2001) argued: “I think that the class
warfare debate has kind of worn itself out. I believe that. I think the American people are
going to reject that debate, pinning so-called rich against poor. I hope so?”
 Intersections. Class and the other key social equity categories (gender and race) can intersect.
For decades this was interpreted as minorities are disadvantaged, and women are
disadvantaged. Ipso facto: female minorities are doubly disadvantaged. Then folks started
noticing that the data showed male minorities were faring less well than female minorities.
 Class and race. As an indication of the difference between class and race, a recent study of
social class variation among students at the nation’s most competitive schools found that the
most under-represented group of Americans at the nation's top colleges and universities is
students from low-income families. Only 3 percent of the freshmen at the 146 most selective
colleges and universities come from families in the bottom quarter of Americans ranked by
income. About 12 percent of the students on those campuses are black or Hispanic, who
combined also account for about a quarter of the population (Kahlenberg, 2000). The report
noted that there are four times as many African-American and Hispanic students as there are
students from the lowest quartile. My hero Guerreiro Ramos was prominent in this issue in
Brazil. As early as the 1950s he argued, in his Patologia Social do Branco Brasileiro (1955),
that Brazil did have a racial problem; that the problem was one of discrimination against
Afro-Brazilians, rather than a problem of Afro-Brazilians; and that economic disadvantage,
independent of race, was a major factor in the issue (1946, 1955).
 Class v. race. When one mentions social class in a social equity context, one does so at the
risk of being accused of trying to emasculate (there's a gender-specific metaphor) affirmative
action. Some people call for a 'class-based' affirmative action, rather than a race or genderbased system; others find this wholly unacceptable.
 Class-based affirmative action. Note, though, that there already is class-based affirmative
action, in the form of legacy recruitments, and all those class-based advantages of unearned
privilege from which the children of the wealthy benefit.
 Class-conscious affirmative action. For what it’s worth, I’m for a class-conscious approach.
In this, one focuses on poor minorities, so that the benefits of these programs are not enjoyed
by relatively affluent minorities.
 Opposition. Opposition to recognizing the importance of social class in America is also
multi-faceted:
 Anti-Communism: Karl Marx's social analysis was structured around social class, and so
for many Americans 'social class' is something that only pinko Commies talk about.
o Marx also angered a lot of religious folk with his famous 'opiate of the masses' quote:
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

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it
is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” -- Contribution to
the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law (1844)
The Horatio Alger myth: we believe that ours is a class-less society, in which anyone can
'make it'. Ours isn't a class-less society, but it is true that anyone can make it. The issue,
though, is that far, far fewer poor children will 'make it' than will rich kids. Many think
this isn't fair, subverting the principle of merit! Two critiques:
o Mark Twain.
o "Middle of the class." The Economist, 16 July, p. 9-13. EBSCO link.
The 1950s: By many accounts, the 1950s were a period of rapid growth, and so
unprecedented social mobility. That has since ceased, as indicated by two articles in The
Economist newsmagazine, in the UK and the US. As a result, there are a lot of people in
positions of authority now who were able to overcome underprivileged backgrounds.
Naturally, they don’t see why others can’t do it, too.
Political: for representatives of the privileged class, an open acknowledgment of class
inequality poses a political threat which needs to be neutralized. See, again, the quote
above from President Bush.
Walter Russell Mead on ‘The Jacksonian Revolt.” Keep in mind that I’m critical of these white
victimization claims, despite coming from the white working class, having written a bit on class
issues, and currently reading JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which Mead reviewed! My concerns
are at least threefold: 1) part of the problem is self-induced, 2) the very real disadvantage faced
by these folks isn’t due to their whiteness, nor is it caused by non-whites, and tax cuts for
corporations or the wealthy are not cures (source, source, source). Questions:
 Does America have a ‘singular commitment to equality and dignity?” See link.
 What of the claims that “for Americans of mixed European background…there are few
acceptable ways to celebrate or even connect with one’s heritage?” See link, and link.
 Rather than America v. cosmopolitanism, I would argue that one cannot work for the
betterment of America without also being a cosmopolitan. Or:
 …rather than “Western elites believed that in the twenty-first century, cosmopolitanism
and globalism would triumph over atavism and tribal loyalties,” instead cosmopolitanism
and globalism must triumph over atavism and tribal loyalties, for the survival of the
world, and so America. Discuss!
 What of the claim that “Jacksonians in 2016 saw immigration as part of a deliberate and
conscious attempt to marginalize them in their own country?”
 What would the response of Jacksonians, with their intermittent concern with foreign policy,
have been to al-Qaeda in Afghanistan on the 10th of September, 2001?
Oldfield's provocative recommendations.
 whimsy -- treat the rich as a focus of study, not just the poor
o See, for instance, Thorstein Veblen
 (more broadly) make government less classist: remove economic hurdles to participation,
value the opinions of line workers, etc.
 class activism -- boycott states/communities not pursuing social equity
 gather data on social class
 class based affirmative action?
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How about class-conscious affirmative action?
 an appreciation of the insidious (not readily identifiable) nature of classism
o For example, from an article in Public Administration Review "...bureaucratic agencies
would not easily tolerate personnel who exhibited lower social class behavior patterns"
(White 1969, p. 39). No discussions of NASCAR around the water cooler!
*
References
Bresser Pereira, Luiz Carlos (2002). “Citizenship and res Publica: The Emergence of Republican
Rights.” Citizenship Studies, 6(2), pp. 145-64. Available online.
Bresser Pereira, Luiz Carlos (2004). Democracy and Public Management Reform. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Broadnax, Walter (2000). "Introduction." In Walter Broadnax (editor), Diversity and
affirmative action in public service. Boulder: Westview.
Candler, GG (2006). “Further evidence on the social equity record of academic public
administration.” ASPA, Denver, 2 April. Available online.
Cooper, Terry (2006). The Responsible Administrator. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco.
Guerreiro Ramos, A. (1946, March 29). Problemas e aspirações do negro brasileiro. Diário
Trabalhista.
Henry, Nicholas (2012). Public Administration and Public Affairs. Boston: Pearson.
Johnson, Lyndon (1965). Commencement address at Howard University, 4 June. Available
online.
Kahlenberg, Richard (2000). “Class-based Affirmative Action in College Admissions.” Idea
Brief No. 9, The Century Foundation. Available online at www.tcf.org. Accessed
November 2003.
Kelsall, F.K. (1955). Higher Civil Servants in Britain: from 1870 to the Present Day. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Obama, Barack (2008). Speech, 18 March, Philadelphia, PA.
Oldfield, Ken (2003). "Social Class and Public Administration: A Closed Question Opens."
Administration and Society 35 (4): 438-461.
Page, Clarence (2007). “Black immigrants collect most degrees,” Chicago Tribune, 18 March.
Pincus, Fred (2000). “Discrimination Comes in Many Forms: Individual, Institutional, and
Structural.” Available online at
http://media.lanecc.edu/users/martinezp/250%20CRG/DiscriminationPincus.pdf
Sen, Amartya (1999). Development as Freedom. New York: Alfred Knopf.
Smith, Adam (1776). An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Chicago,
University of Chicago Press, republished 1976.
Wang, Bing and Yuanfei Gu (2002). “Three Paradigms of Public Administration: An Analysis
of the Current Status of Public Administration in China.” Chinese Public Administration
1(3/4), pp. 199-208.
White, O. (1969). The dialectical organization: An alternative to bureaucracy. Public
Administration Review, 29(1), 32-42.
Wilson, Woodrow (1887). "The study of administration," Political Science Quarterly 2(2): 197222.
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