Protection in Historical Perspective

From A.P. Thirlwall and Penélope Pacheco-López, Trade Liberalisation and The Poverty of Nations Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2008)

Protection in Historical Perspective

The best historical description of the role of protection in the early industrialisation phase of the now-developed countries is given by Ha-Joon Chang, the Cambridge economist, in three fascinating books: Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective (2002); Why Developing Countries Need Tariffs? (2005); and Bad Samaritans: Rich Nations, Poor Policies and the Threat to the Developing World (2007). In this section we rely heavily on the evidence in these books.

The current developed countries of the world, including Britain, the United States and the countries of continental Europe and Scandinavia did not develop their economies on the basis of free trade. On the contrary, they heavily protected their domestic industries, and also did their utmost to prevent the countries that they colonised from competing with them. Britain started to protect and foster industries as early as the late 15th century when Henry VII took the deliberate decision to challenge the successful woollen manufacturing industry of Belgium and Holland, which was reliant on the export of British wool. He taxed the

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export of raw wool and banned export of some types of unfinished cloth in order to encourage processing at home. Henry VIII continued the protectionist policy, and by the middle of the reign of Elizabeth I, Britain had sufficient processing capacity to ban the export of wool entirely, which ruined the cloth industry of the Low Countries. Britain first became rich on its woollen industry nurtured by the State. Serious protection of new manufacturing industries started with Robert Walpole in 1721, using tariffs, subsidies, tariff rebates on imported inputs and other protective devices – all of which are deemed to be damaging to developing countries today. In the early 19th century, Britain imposed some of the highest tariff rates on manufactured goods in the world, averaging 45–55 per cent.

Britain also prevented its colonies from producing manufactured goods. William Pitt the Elder, the British Prime Minister from 1766 to 1768, is quoted by Friedrich List (1885) as saying that ‘the colonies should not be permitted to manufacture so much as a horsenail’. All sorts of devices were resorted to in the 18th century to keep the colonies as producers of primary commodities, giving subsidies to production, and reducing tariffs on raw material imports into Britain. A law passed in 1699 forbade the export of processed wool products from the English colonies, including Ireland. In 1700, all cotton goods from India were prohibited. In the 1720s, Walpole gave export subsidies and abolished import duties on raw materials produced in the American colonies so that their comparative

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advantage stayed in primary products. Some manufacturing activities were even prohibited, such as high value-added steel products in America. The use of tariffs by the colonies was either banned or, where used for revenue purposes, a tax was imposed on the industry concerned to neutralise its competitive advantage. In other countries not colonised by Britain, ‘unequal treaties’ were signed which took away the tariff autonomy of the countries and set ‘binding’ tariffs that countries could not exceed, typically about 5 per cent in countries such as Brazil, China, Japan, Siam (now Thailand) and Persia (now Iran). With regard to Europe, Britain also tried to protect itself against competition, although to less effect. The export of some types of machinery embodying new technology was banned, and for over sixty years from 1719 to 1782 there was a ban on the emigration of skilled labour from Britain. Those who defied the ban, and did not return within six months, had their possessions confiscated and citizenship withdrawn.

Britain’s industrial revolution gathered momentum in the mid-18th century, when protection still prevailed. It would be a rewriting of history, therefore, to argue that Britain started its development process on the basis of free trade. Britain did not start dismantling its structure of protection until the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, but by then it had already attained technological superiority over all other countries in the world. From then on, Britain preached free trade, but as List (1885) remarked, such preaching was like ‘kicking away

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the ladder’ up which one has climbed oneself so that no-one else can reach the top. List comments:

It is a very common clever device that where anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, in order to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him. In this lies the secret of the cosmopolitan doctrine of Adam Smith, and the cosmopolitan tendencies of his great contemporary William Pitt, and of all his successors in the British Government administrations. Any nation which by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade, and to declare in penitent tone that she has hitherto wandered in the paths of error, and has now for the first time succeeded in discovering the truth. (pp. 295–6)

The United States followed Britain’s protectionist route at the end of the 18th century, contrary to Adam Smith’s advice in the Wealth of Nations. Here is what Smith had to say:

Were the Americans, either by combination or by any other sort of violence to stop the importation of European manufactures, and, by thus giving a monopoly to such of their own countrymen as could manufacture the like goods, divert any considerable part of their capital into this employment, they would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness. (pp. 347–8)

If the United States had followed Adam Smith’s advice, it would have remained an economic

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backwater for a long time, instead of becoming the richest industrialised country in the world. In the 19th century, the US economy was the fastest growing in the world, and also the most protectionist. Paul Bairoch (1993) has described the United States as ‘the mother country and bastion of modern protectionism’. It was the US Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton in 1791, who first coined the term ‘infant industry’, and who first argued the case for industrialisation by protection using tariffs, subsidies and other means, recognising that without protection it would be impossible for America to compete against more advanced countries, notably Britain. List, in his classic book The National System of Political Economy, first published in German in 1841, claims that he first learnt the infant industry argument for protection while in exile in the US in the 1820s. The US first imposed tariffs on industrial goods in 1789. Protection continued to increase in the 19th century and by 1870, import tariffs accounted for more than 50 per cent of the value of imports. Protection continued in the early 20th century, and was even strengthened in the 1930s with the ‘Smoot–Hawley’ tariff which raised the average tariff on manufactured goods to nearly 50 per cent. According to Bairoch (1993) no other country implemented a more protectionist policy to promote its industry than the United States. Only after the Second World War did it start to liberalise its trade, having already established industrial supremacy, and was able to ‘kick away the ladder’, as Britain had done a century earlier.

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German industrial policy in the 19th century was heavily influenced by the views of List. He believed that import duties should not only be used to protect industry but also to promote it, supported by the State. Germany’s average tariff rate on industrial goods was not as high as in the US, but the German State actively promoted industry by ‘assigning monopoly rights, establishing industrial cartels, providing export subsidies, importing industrial experts and skilled labour, establishing large banks and making large investments in coal production and railway and road construction’ (Skarstein, 2007).

Japan was prevented from using tariffs up to 1911 because of the ‘unequal treaties’ signed, as referred to earlier. But after 1911, Japan embarked on a comprehensive development strategy, a major part of which included substantial tariff protection, combined with subsidies to key (infant) industries and State investment in infrastructure. Just before the First World War, Japan’s average tariff on manufactured imports was 30 per cent. The protectionist stance continued after the Second World War, with tariffs on car imports, for example, of nearly 40 per cent. Protectionism in the 1950s and 1960s was combined with the highest GDP growth rate of any country in the world. If Japan had listened to the free-traders, it would have no industrial base.

The average tariff rates on manufactured goods for selected developed countries in their early stages of development are shown in Table 1.1.

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Notice the very high tariff rates for the UK and US in 1820, the continued high rates in the US up to 1950, and the relatively high rates in France, Germany and Italy too. These are much higher rates that the average nominal tariff on imports of manufactures into today’s developing countries.

Average tariff rates for developed countries fell dramatically after 1950, but it is interesting to note that five of the six fastest growing countries during the ‘golden age’ of growth 1950–73 were still the highest tariff countries: Japan (8.05 per cent), Italy (4.95 per cent), Austria (4.90 per cent), Finland (4.25 per cent) and France (4.05 per cent). Germany was the only fast growing country in this period with the lowest tariffs.

The historical record tells the same story. O’Rourke (2000) takes ten of today’s developed countries over the period 1875–1914 and shows a positive relation between tariff rates and GDP growth, controlling for other factors influencing growth. Clemens and Williamson (2001) examine 35 developed and developing countries over the period 1875–1908 and 1924–34 and also find a positive relation between the level of tariffs and growth. Vamvakidis (2002) takes the inter-war period 1920–40 and finds a positive relation between tariff rates and growth across 22 countries (although not for the period 1870–1910). Studies of more recent years show the same positive relation between levels of trade restrictions and growth, controlling for other variables. Yanikkaya (2003) takes more than 100 countries over the period

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1970–97 and finds that both tariffs and export taxes seem to be associated with faster growth. He concludes: ‘these results . . . provide support for the infant industry case for protection and for strategic trade policy’. And Rodrik (2001) asserts: ‘cross national comparisons of the literature reveals no systematic relationship between a country’s average level of tariff and non-tariff restrictions and its subsequent economic growth rate. If anything the evidence for the 1990s indicates a positive (but statistically insignificant) relationship between tariffs and economic growth’ (italics in the original).

It can be said with some confidence that tariffs never harmed economic progress in the countries now developed. On the contrary, they ‘climbed the ladder’ on the back of tariffs and other protectionist devices. All we know is that as countries get richer they dismantle trade restrictions, not that they get richer because they liberalise trade. The issue for developing countries today is not whether to protect, but how to protect in order to ensure the dynamic efficiency of its nascent industrial activities.

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References:

Bairoch, P. (1993), Economics and World History – Myths and Paradoxes (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf).
List, F. (1885), The National System of Political Economy, translated from the original German edition published in 1841 by Sampson Lloyd (London: Longmann, Green and Company).
O’Rourke, K. (2000), Tariffs and Growth in the Late 19th Century, Economic Journal, April.
Rodrik, D. (2001), The Global Governance of Trade: As If Development Really Mattered (New York: UNDP).
Skarstein, R. (2007), Free Trade: A Dead End for Underdeveloped Countries, Review of Political Economy, July.
Smith, A. (1776), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: George Routledge and Sons).
Vamvakidis, A. (2002), How Robust is the Growth – Openness Connection: Historical Evidence, Journal of Economic Growth, March.
Yanikkaya, H. (2003), Trade Openness and Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Investigation, Journal of Development Economics, October.

Shamanistic Rituals in Effective Schools

Steve Sailer’s recent posting of an Onion spoof about naive, well meaning new teachers being destroyed by their experiences in inner city schools reminded me of a section in this little gem, that I found when it was re-published in Charlotte Iserbyt’s The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, about those occasional mass-hysteric episodes where someone claims to have the ‘cure’ for diversity-based differential outcomes in education. It seems the article is unavailable anywhere online for free, so here it is, as published in Iserbyt:

[Not a spoof!]

“Shamanistic Rituals in Effective Schools*”

“Shamanistic Rituals in Effective Schools*” by Brian Rowan, Senior Research Scientist, Far West Laboratory for Educational Research and Development. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA, April, 1984. Asterisk in title is notation on bottom of title page which states, “Work on this paper was supported by the National Institute of Education, Department of Education, under Contract No. 400–83–003. The contents do not necessarily reflect the view or policies of the Department of Education or the National Institute of Education.” Brian Rowan was involved in Bill Spady’s Far West Lab grant to the Utah State Department of Education to “put OBE in all schools of the nation.”

This paper develops a theoretical perspective for analyzing the non-scientific uses of research in educational policy debates. A central focus is educational researchers’ use of shamanistic rituals to affect organizational health (cf., Miracle, 1982). A number of shamanistic rituals derived from research on “effective” schools are described here, and an analysis demonstrates the circumstances under which these rituals can be used to divine the unknown, cure ills, and control uncertain events.

Background

Miracle (1982) suggested that shamans and applied social scientists perform a number of similar functions in society. Shamans, the powerful medicine men of premodern societies, worked mainly to cure ills, divine the unknown, and control uncertain events, and they performed these functions by using a specialized craft obtained after a long period of formal initiation and training. Similarly, applied social scientists acquire a specialized craft after initiation and training, and they too are called upon to alleviate the vague ills of corporate groups, divine the unknown for organizational strategists, or bring order to the uncertain events that plague institutional affairs.

The analogy raises a number of important issues for applied social science. First and foremost, shamans practice magic, whereas applied social researchers are thought to practice “science.” To liken scientists to magicians raises interesting questions about the relationship of science to pragmatic action. An additional problem is that shamans are but one of the many practitioners of magic in societies, and they can be distinguished from others who employ magic in their rituals, for example, sorcerers, witches and wizards. This observation raises questions about the uses of research in modern policy analysis. If educational “science” functions as magic, who are the shamans, witches, and sorcerers of educational research?

Forms of Pragmatic Action

We begin with the problem of whether applied educational scientists practice magic. A number of anthropologists have observed that magic is used for pragmatic purposes in premodern societies, but that magic is not the only form of pragmatism available to premodern practitioners. For example, both Malinowski (1948) and Evans Pritchard (1965) argued that premodern societies possessed sound technical logics that practitioners could use to successfully accomplish most work tasks. In addition, premodern people were able to sharply distinguish between these working, practical logics and magic. In premodern societies, when tasks were going well, the technical logic of everyday work dominated action. But as uncertainties increased, or as conflict and stress became more problematic, premodern practitioners began to supplement technique with magic. Thus, Malinowski (1948) observed the fishing practices of Trobriand islanders and found that, in the safety of lagoons, practitioners made little use of magic and relied primarily on established technical routines to ensure good fishing. But as activities moved into the more dangerous open seas, magic was increasingly invoked as a supplemental technical aid.

Similar points can be made about the modern educational practitioner’s use of research. It seems clear that schools have an established series of technical routines (Goodlad, 1983). But these practices are not grounded in the highly stylized logics of modern science. Rather, they exist in the more subtle and largely unarticulated logic of teachers and administrators (Jackson, 1968). Although some educational observers have likened this unarticulated logic to magic (e.g., Lortie, 1975), Malinwoski’s (1948) [sic] discussion suggests that it is more appropriate to think of educational research as magic. The educational practitioner appears to make wide use of the subtle and unarticulated logic of schooling, and this logic appears to have the desired technical effect on a large number of students (Hyman, Wright and Reed, 1975). Practitioners make much less use of the stylized “scientific” knowledge of applied social scientists. Indeed, like Malinowski’s Trobrianders, they appear to reserve the use of “science” for those sectors of schooling which are problematic or in “crisis.”

Other arguments also suggest that educational “science” functions much like magic. As Miracle (1982) noted, both applied social scientists and shamans utilize a “force” that derives from an other world (Mauss and Hubert, 1961). Shamans, for example, often travel to other worlds to communicate with spirits or accompany the dead to their supernatural resting places. As a result, they are said to inhabit both the real world and a spirit or supernatural world. Similarly, applied scientists appear to inhabit two distinct worlds, one the “real” world, the other the proverbial “ivory tower.” It is widely recognized that knowledge gained in the ivory tower is not the same as that gained in the “real” world, an observation that endows “scientific” knowledge with a certain otherworldly nature. Thus, like shamans, applied educational scientists inhabit two worlds and practice a craft that has a special legitimacy in social affairs.

Types of Magic

If we perist [sic] in the analogy between educational “science” and magic, it becomes useful to classify various types of magic and magicians. In premodern societies, for example, there were numerous practitioners of magic, including not only shamans, but also various witches, wizards and sorcerers. Distinctions among these practitioners can be made on the basis of their actual magic practices. Wizards and witches often practiced forms of “black magic” that were used as weapons to defend interests or harm enemies, whereas the shaman’s magic was most often employed for benevolent purposes, including the curing of ills. There is also a need to look carefully at the rituals practiced by different groups. For example, shamans often engage in a common “spitting and sucking cure,” but they also use other rituals from their “bag of tricks.”

Educational researchers can also be classified by the types and functions of the rituals they perform. For example, policy analysts sometimes use the rituals of research to confound and weaken political or scientific opponents, a form of research that appears similar to the “black” magic of witches. But there are also research shamans who can be called upon by policy analysts to perform healing rituals. All types of research ritualists select from a common and well-known bag of research tricks, although in recent years there has been a rise of ritual specialists who exclusively work either qualitative or quantitative magic on policy audiences.

Shamanism and School Effectiveness Research

In this paper, we limit attention to a single type of research ritualist—the research shaman—and to a few related magic tricks used within a narrow policy domain. Our interest is in describing research rituals that heal and revitalize sectors of education and not in research that fans controversy, inflicts harm on ideological enemies, or demoralizes existing constituencies in a policy domain. Moreover, the analysis will be narrowed to a few research rituals used in one policy domain to better illustrate how research shamans operate.

Shamanism and Crisis

It is commonly observed that working practitioners in education remain detached from, even ignorant of, the findings and applications of applied research. Yet this observation is not entirely true. Educational policy makers and their research ritualists continue to generate research, and this research continues to play a role in certain sectors of educational practice. Thus, a question emerges: in what sectors of educational institutions are the rituals of research shamanism most utilized?

Anthropological studies suggest some answers to this question. It has been argued that magic assumes its highest importance in institutional sectors plagued by three conditions: (a) high levels of technical uncertainty; (b) structural cleavages that create great stress among social groups; and (c) social disorganization that creates problematic mood states among participants (Malinowski, 1925; Gluckman, 1952; Wallace, 1956). The argument here is that research shamanism is most valued in sectors of education that contain these characteristics. Thus, research in education is most numerous in areas where there is high technical uncertainty (do schools/programs/teachers make a difference to educational outcomes?). The rituals of research also take on great importance in areas where there is conflict among social groups (are new educational initiatives needed to redress past social inequities?). And finally, research is increasingly directed at problems related to disorganization and dissatisfaction in institutional sectors of education (are urban/high schools better or worse than in the past?).

Research on Effective Schools

Research on effective schools has its origins in these problems. The research deals with a sector of educational institutions—the instructional core—which has long been the subject of uncertainty, conflict, and pessimism, and where the use of myth and ritual has been common (Meyer and Rowan, 1977; 1978). What is distinctive about “effective schools” research, in contrast to much past scientific work, is that it has taken a shamanistic approach to the problems of schooling. It has not fanned the flames of discontent and uncertainty like previous scholarly work (e.g., Coleman et al., 1966; Averch et al., 1972; Jencks et al., 1972), but instead has held out hope that the pervasive ills of modern urban schooling can be cured.

Edmonds (1979a), the most powerful of all effective schools shamans before his untimely death, seemed accutely [sic] aware of the need for healing in modern educational institutions, and a careful reading of his works reveals his strategy for effecting a cure for the problems confronting urban education. He argued that research must be used to counter the pessimistic view that schools have weak effects on student outcomes, and that as this occurred, practitioners could attain new expectation states that facilitated, rather than hindered, the achievement of disadvantaged children (see, especially, Edmonds, 1978; 1979b). Thus, Edmonds saw that “science” could be used to confront the conflicts, uncertainties, and problematic mood states afflicting modern schooling.

That Edmonds’ [sic] approach possessed a special “force” in educational policy arenas is indisputable. Like the revitalization movements that swept the great plains during the period of indian [sic] decline (Wallace, 1966), the rituals of effective schools research diffused widely and rapidly. They were adopted by other shamans, who brought them to state departments of education and local school systems, and there these rituals were used as the cornerstone of ambitious revitalization ceremonials (see, e.g., Ogden et al., 1982; Shoemaker, 1982; Clark and McCarthy, 1983).

It is worth noting that the perspective being developed here does not necessarily imply that these shamanistic rituals are hoaxes. Indeed, just as many modern medical practitioners have come to recognize the wisdom and efficacy of shamans, there is at least some reason to think that the arguments of effective schools proponents possess some scientific merit (see, e.g., Rowan, Bossert and Dwyer, 1983). Nevertheless, for the moment, it is useful to suspend our empirical curiousity [sic] about whether these initiatives really “work,” [sic] and to examine instead some of the concrete ritual practices that characterize this new educational movement.

Important Shamanistic Rituals

It has already been suggested that shamanistic rituals are designed to cure ills, divine the unknown, and control uncertain events. In this section of the paper, three prominent effective schools rituals are discussed and their relationship to the central functions of magic are illustrated.

Curing Ills with Literature Reviews

We begin with one of the most common shamanistic rituals in the effective schools movement, the glowing literature review that promises relief from the currently pervasive sense that educational institutions are in poor organizational health. Miller’s (1983: 1) review illustrates the general form of this ritual: “Not so long ago the conventional wisdom regarding American schools was that ‘schools do not make a difference.’ ...Yet today... the message of... research is primarily postive [sic] and upbeat: schools can make a difference” (Miller, 1983: 1).

A closer look illustrates the consistent dramatic form used by reviewers to affect the promise of a cure. First, the authors contrast the dismal tradition of school effects research with “more recent” and more positive studies of effective schools. This is followed by the citation of a host of previously unpublished and obscure studies which are often nothing more than other positive literature reviews. The final step is a grandiose concluding statement, which most often calls on practitioners to adopt the new discoveries.

We speculate that these rituals have their most dramatic effect on naïve individuals who have little time or inclination to follow-up footnotes or read works cited in the text, or on those who have little tolerance for the ambiguity that marks true scientific debate. Lacking a systematic understanding of the scientific pros and cons of effective schools research, naïve individuals are left only with the powerful and appealing rhetoric of the reviewers. Thus it is that research on effective schools has come to be seen as a “cure” for educational ills the less it has been published in scholarly journals and the more it has been disseminated in practitioner magazines. The experiences shaman knows to avoid the scrutiny of scholars, for this can raise objections to the “scientific” basis of ritual claims and divert attention away from the appealing rhetoric. Instead, the shaman cultivates the practitioner who needs a simple and appealing formula.

Divining the Unknown Using Outliers

While the literature review ritual can be observed equally well by both qualitative and quantitative specialists, a second ritual, designed to divine the unknown, is the exclusive domain of quantitative ritualists. The ritual uses residuals from a regression analysis to identify “effective” schools and to contrast them with “ineffective” schools. The purpose is to divine an answer to two nagging questions in school effectiveness research: which are the effective schools in a system and what are these schools doing that makes them different?

The techniques involved in this ritual have been described before (see, Rowan et al., 1983). A regression equation predicting school achievement from school socioeconomic composition is tested, and errors of prediction are calculated. The errors (or residuals) are used to identify “effective” and “ineffective” schools and form samples for contrasted groups studies. The ritual almost always strongly supports the rhetorical posture of the ritual literature review. Since predictor variables never account for all of the variance in school-level achievement, an analysis of residuals will always demonstrate that schools differ in achievement even after controlling for socioeconomic composition. Thus any experienced shaman can find “effective” schools. Second, if a shaman asks a large number of questions, a number of structural and cultural differences between effective and ineffective schools can be found. Thus, the outliers ritual not only identifies the previously unrecognized “effective” schools, it also reveals for the first time why these schools attain effectiveness.

From a magician’s standpoint, this ritual’s power can be increased in a number of ways. First, the worse the specification of the initial regression model, the more persuasive the ritual. For example, by failing to include all measures of school socioeconomic composition, a shaman can increase the residual achievement differences between schools. This, in turn, enhances claims that “effective” schools make a difference to achievement. Moreover, to the extent that school characteristics are correlated to omitted socioeconomic predictors, misspecification [sic] enhances the liklihood [sic] that differences in school characteristics will be found between “effective” and “ineffective” groups of schools. Thus, the worse the initial regression model, the more powerful the shamanistic ritual.

A related tactic is to use aggregate models. By using schools rather than individuals as the unit of analysis, proportions of variance in achievement explained by school management and culture are increased. In between-school analyses, schools can be seen to account for nearly 30% of the variance in achievement. But in between-individual analyses, this is reduced to about 5%. Thus, effective schools ritualists have been able to inflate their claims of school effects through a simple aggregation trick (see Alexander and Griffin, 1976).

The experienced shaman also avoids certain practices. For example, it is wise not to repeat the residuals ritual in the same population, for this highlights the low correlation of residuals over time and raises questions about measurement reliability. It is much wiser to demonstrate reliability by using the conventional, and cross-sectional, “split/half” procedure of psychometricians (see, Forsythe, 1973). Similarly, after a few performances of the residuals ritual and the associated contrasted group study, it becomes possible to ignore problems of validation. Thus, as time moves on, the wise shaman avoids achievement data and the residuals ritual entirely, and instead assesses schools on the degree to which their structures match those of previously identified “effective” schools.

Controlling Uncertainty through Measurement

A final shamanistic ritual in the effective schools movement requires the shaman to have advanced training in the art of psychometrics. The ritual is particularly suited to application in urban or low performing school systems where successful instructional outcomes among disadvantaged students are highly uncertain but where mobilized publics demand immediate demonstrations of success. The uncertainties faced by practitioners in this situation can easily be alleviated by what scholars have begun to call “curriculum alignment.”

This ritual begins with an analysis of what is actually being taught in schools. The shaman conducting the ritual assembles a group of local practitioners and together they list instructional objectives for each grade level. The next step is to find achievement tests that ask questions related to these objectives. To the extent that test items matching local objectives are found, either in commerically [sic] prepared tests or in locally constructed ones, and to the extent that these items are used in achievement testing rather than the haphazard collection of items contained in most commerically [sic] prepared tests, the curriculum and testing systems of the local school are said to be “aligned.”

Since it is known that at least some variance in student achievement is a function of students [sic] opportunity to learn what is tested in criterion measures (Cooley and Leinhardt, 1980), the alignment ritual can have immediate effects on perceptions of effectiveness. For example, a school system moving from an unaligned commercially prepared achievement test to an aligned one can expect that it will score higher on national norms than before. But this increased “effectiveness” does not occur because students are learning more or different things. In the typical alignment ceremony, only test items—not instruction—are changed. Nevertheless, while student learning remains unchanged, alignment allows students to practice criterion measures and achieve higher test scores, thus giving them an advantage over comparable students in unaligned school systems.

An even more powerful demonstration of instructional effectiveness can be achieved if shamans avoid the standard psychometric practice of designing norm-referenced achievement tests and move instead toward criterion-referenced tests. As Popham and Husek (1969) discussed, the typical norm-referenced achievement test eliminates items that nearly all students in a population can answer correctly, since norm-referenced tests are designed to produce between-student variance in achievement scores. But if one neglects this practice and allows items that almost everyone can answer correctly to be included in achievement tests, a larger number of students will appear to be performing more successfully in their academics.

Thus, the art of measurement can be used as an aid to shamanism, espcially [sic] in urban schools plagued by the uncertainties of student performance. Student variability in performance can be reduced, and relative performance increased, not by changing instructional objectives or practices, but simply by changing tests and testing procedures.

Conclusion

The analysis of specific shamanistic rituals in the effective schools movement raises a number of important questions about the relationship of applied science to pragmatic action. Most importantly, it suggests that future studies of “science” as magic are needed. There is a need to begin to chart other rituals used by applied scientists to disarm enemies, cure ills, and divine the unknown. Moreover, there is a need to study the conditions under which these magical practices spread through practitioner populations. Using this perspective, much of the literature on organizational change and applied research can be rewritten from an institutional perspective (Meyer and Rowan, 1977).

At the same time, there is a need to carefully analyze the science of magic. There can be little doubt that Malinowski’s (1948: 50) observations about premodern magic will ring true for many observers of current applied research in education:

...when the sociologist approaches the study of magic... he finds to his disappointment an entirely sober, prosaic, even clumsy art, enacted for purely practical reasons, governed by crude and shallow beliefs, carried out in a simple and monotonous technique.

Yet this “clumsy” art sometimes achieves great effects in practitioner communities and may even have some empirical merit, and this raises the appealing promise that applied social scientists can someday develop shamanistic rituals that empirically “work.”

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Miller, S. A history of effective schools research: A critical review. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational research [sic] Association, Montreal, April, 1983.
Miracle, A.W. The making of shamans and applied anthropologists. Practicing Anthropology, 1982, 5, 18–19.
Ogden, E., W. Fowler and D. Kunz. A study of strategies to increase student achievement in low achieving schools. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, March, 1982.
Popham, W. and H. Husek. Implications of criterion referenced measurement. Journal of Educational Measurement, 1969, 6, 1–9.
Rowan, B., S. Bossert and D. Dwyer. Research on effective schools: a cautionary note. Educational Researcher, 1983, 12, 24–31.
Shoemaker, J. What are we learning? Evaluating the Connecticut school effectiveness project. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New York, March, 1982.
Wallace, A. Revitalization movements. American Anthropologist, 1956, 58, 264–281.

Ezra Pound on Brooks Adams

In the Greenwood Press Ezra Pound Encyclopedia:

Carta da Visita
Written in Italian, Carta da Visita was published in Rome in 1942 by Giambattista Vicari. A new edition was published in Milan in 1974 by Vanni Scheiwiller, and an English version, in a translation by John Drummond and titled A Visiting Card, was published in London in 1952. This translation was reprinted, with some revisions, in Impact (1960), pages 44–74, and without the revisions in Selected Prose 1909–1965 (1973), pages 306–335.

Carta da Visita consists of some thirty headwords, apparently disjointed but with a certain internal coherence, dealing with economics, politics, history, and culture. The concept of the nation, its control of the economy, its monetary system and policies (the right to coin and to lend money, the introduction of stamp script), and its falling under hostile forces such as international monopolism and usurocracy govern Pound’s choice for headwords. Characteristically Pound traces the history of his favorite conflict through positive and negative models: Monte dei Paschi di Siena and the monetary experiment of Wörgl versus Bank of England. He also points to the affinities between the American and the Fascist Revolutions. As regards culture, he advances his “canon” (Homer, Sappho, the Latin elegists, Troubadours, Cavalcanti, Dante, etc.) in a dense but imprecise language for whose renewal and reinvigoration he is hoping.
Stefano Maria Casella

One of the thirty joints as published in Impact:

Brooks Adams

This member of the Adams family, son of C. F. Adams, grandson of J. Q. Adams, and great-grandson of J. Adams, Father of the Nation, was, as far as I know, the first to formulate the idea of Kulturmorphologie in America. His cyclic vision of the West shows us a consecutive struggle against four great rackets, namely the exploitation of the fear of the unknown (black magic, etc.), the exploitation of violence, the exploitation or monopolization of cultivable land, and the exploitation of money.

But not even Adams himself seems to have realized that he fell for the nineteenth-century metaphysic with regard to this last. He distinguishes between the swindle of the usurers and that of the monopolists, but he slides into the concept, shared by Mill and Marx, of money as an accumulator of energy.

Mill defined capital “as the accumulated stock of human labour.”

And Marx, or his Italian translator: “commodities, in so far as they are values, are materialized labour,”

so denying both God and nature.

With the falsification of the word everything else is betrayed.

Commodities (considered as values, surplus values, food, clothes, or whatever) are manufactured raw materials.

Only spoken poetry and unwritten music are composed without any material basis, nor do they become “materialized.”

The usurers, in their obscene and pitch-dark century, created this satanic transubstantiation, their Black Mass of money, and in so doing deceived Brooks Adams himself, who was fighting for the peasant and humanity against the monopolists.

“ ... money alone is capable of being transmuted immediately into any form of activity.” -- This is the idiom of the black myth!

One sees well enough what he was trying to say, as one understands what Mill and Marx were trying to say. But the betrayal of the word begins with the use of words that do not fit the truth, that do not say what the author wants them to say.

Money does not contain energy. The half-lira piece cannot create the platform ticket, the cigarettes, or piece of chocolate that issues from the slot-machine.

But it is by this piece of legerdemain that humanity has been thoroughly trussed up, and it has not yet got free.

Without history one is lost in the dark, and the essential data of modern history cannot enlighten us unless they are traced back at least to the foundation of the Sienese bank, the Monte dei Paschi; in other words to the perception of the true basis of credit, viz., “the abundance of nature and the responsibility of the whole people.”

The difference between money and credit is one of time.

Credit is the future tense of money. Without the definition of words knowledge cannot be transmitted from one man to another. One can base one’s discourse on definitions, or on the recounting of historical events (the philosophical method, or the literary or historical method, respectively).

Without a narrative prelude, perhaps, no one would have the patience to consider so called “dry” definitions.

The war in which brave men are being killed and wounded, our own war here and now, began - or rather the phase we are now fighting began - in 1694, with the foundation of the Bank of England.

Said Paterson in his manifesto addressed to prospective shareholders, “the bank hath benefit of the interest of an moneys which it creates out of nothing.”

This swindle, calculated to yield interest at the usurious rate of sixty percent, was impartial. It hit friends and enemies alike.

In the past the quantity of money in circulation was regulated, as Lord Overstone (Samuel Lloyd) has said, “to meet the real wants of commerce, and to discount all commercial bills arising out of legitimate transactions.”

But after Waterloo Brooks Adams saw that “nature herself was favouring the usurers.”

For more than a century after Waterloo, no force stood up to the monopoly of money. The relevant passage from Brooks Adams is as follows:

“Perhaps no financier has ever lived abler than Samuel Lloyd. Certainly he understood as few men, even of later generations, have understood, the mighty engine of the single standard. He comprehended that, with expanding trade, an inelastic currency must rise in value; he saw that, with sufficient resources at command, his class might be able to establish such a rise, almost at pleasure; certainly that they could manipulate it when it came, by taking advantage of foreign exchange. He perceived moreover that, once established, a contraction of the currency might be forced to an extreme, and that when money rose beyond price, as in 1825, debtors would have to surrender their property on such terms as creditors might dictate.” *

I’m sorry if this passage should seem obscure to the average man of letters, but one cannot understand history in twenty minutes. Our culture lies shattered in fragments, and with the monetology of the usurocracy our economic culture has become a closed book to the aesthetes.

The peasant feeds us and the gombeen-man strangles us - if he cannot suck our blood by degrees.

History is written with a knowledge of the despatches of the ambassador Barbon Morosini (particularly one dated from Paris, 28 January, 1723 (Venetian style), describing the Law affair), together with a knowledge of the documents leading up to the foundation of the Monte dei Paschi, and the scandalous pages of Antonio Lobero, archivist of the Banco di San Giorgio of Genoa.

We are still in the same darkness which John Adams, Father of the Nation, described as “downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit, and circulation.”

* Brooks Adams, The Law of Civilization and Decay

From ‘Cider with Rosie’

by Laurie Lee:

The week before Christmas, when snow seemed to lie thickest, was the moment for carol-singing; and when I think back to those nights it is to the crunch of snow and to the lights of the lanterns on it. Carol-singing in my village was a special tithe for the boys, the girls had little to do with it. Like hay-making, blackberrying, stone-clearing, and wishing-people-a-happy-Easter, it was one of our seasonal perks.

By instinct we knew just when to begin; a day too soon and we should have been unwelcome, a day too late and we should have received lean looks from people whose bounty was already exhausted. When the true moment came, exactly balanced, we recognized it and were ready.

So as soon as the wood had been stacked in the oven to dry for the morning fire, we put on our scarves and went out through the streets, calling loudly between our hands, till the various boys who knew the signal ran out from their houses to join us.

One by one they came stumbling over the snow, swinging their lanterns’ around their heads, shouting and coughing horribly.

‘Come carol-barking then?’

We were the Church Choir, so no answer was necessary. For a year we had praised the Lord out of key, and as a reward for this service - on top of the Outing - we now had the right to visit all the big houses, to sing our carols and collect our tribute.

To work them all in meant a five-mile foot journey over wild and generally snowed-up country. So the first thing we did was to plan our route; a formality, as the route never changed. All the same, we blew on our fingers and argued; and then we chose our Leader. This was not binding, for we all fancied ourselves as Leaders, and he who started the night in that position usually trailed home with a bloody nose.

Eight of us set out that night. There was Sixpence the Tanner, who had never sung in his life (he just worked his mouth in church); the brothers Horace and Boney, who were always fighting everybody and always getting the worst of it; Clergy Green, the preaching maniac; Wait the bully, and my two brothers. As we went down the lane other boys, from other villages, were already about the hills, bawling ‘Kingwenslush’, and shouting through keyholes ‘Knock on the knocker! Ring at the Bell! Give us a penny for singing so well!’ They weren’t an approved charity as we were, the Choir; but competition was in the air.

Our first call as usual was the house of the Squire, and we trouped nervously down his drive. For light we had candles in marmalade-jars suspended on loops of string, an d they threw pale gleams on the towering snowdrifts that stood on each side of the drive. A blizzard was blowing, but we were well wrapped up, with Army puttees on our legs, woollen hats on our heads, and several scarves around our ears.

As we approached the Big House across its white silent lawns, we too grew respectfully silent. The lake near by was stiff and black, the waterfall frozen and still. We arranged ourselves shuffling around the big front door, then knocked and announced the Choir.

A maid bore the tidings of our arrival away into the echoing distances of the house, and while we waited we cleared our throats noisily. Then she came back, and the door was left ajar for us, and we were bidden to begin. We brought no music, the carols were in our heads. ‘Let’s give ’em “Wild Shepherds”,’ said Jack. We began in confusion, plunging into a wreckage of keys, of different words and tempo; but we gathered our strength; he who sang loudest took the rest of us with him, and the carol took shape if not sweetness.

This huge stone house, with its ivied walls, was always a mystery to us. What were those gables, those rooms and attics, those narrow windows veiled by the cedar trees. As we sang Wild Shepherds’ we craned our necks, gaping into that lamplit hall which we had never entered; staring at the muskets and untenanted chairs, the great tapestries furred by dust - until suddenly, on the stairs, we saw the old Squire himself standing and listening with his head on one side.

He didn’t move until we’d finished; then slowly he tottered towards us, dropped two coins in our box with a trembling hand, scratched his name in the book we carried, gave us each a long look with his moist blind eyes, then turned away in silence.

As though released from a spell, we took a few sedate steps, then broke into a run for the gate. We didn’t stop till we were out of the grounds. Impatient, at last, to discover the extent of his bounty, we squatted by the cowsheds, held our lanterns over the book, and saw that he had written ‘Two Shillings’. This was quite a good start. No one of any worth in the district would dare to give us less than the Squire.

Steadily we worked through the length of the valley, going from house to house, visiting the lesser and the greater gentry - the farmers, the doctors, the merchants, the majors, and other exalted persons. It was freezing hard and blowing too; yet not for a moment did we feel the cold. The snow blew into our faces, into our eyes and mouths, soaked through our puttees, got into our boots, and dripped from our woollen caps. But we did not care. The collecting-box grew heavier, and the list of names in the book longer and more extravagant, each trying to outdo the other.

Mile after mile we went, fighting against the wind, falling into snowdrifts, and navigating by the lights of the houses. And yet we never saw our audience. We called at house after house; we sang in courtyards and porches, outside windows, or in the damp gloom of hallways; we heard voices from hidden rooms; we smelt rich clothes and strange hot food; we saw maids bearing in dishes or carrying away coffee-cups; we received nuts, cakes, figs, preserved ginger, dates, cough-drops, and money; but we never once saw our patrons. We sang as it were at the castle walls, and apart from the Squire, who had shown himself to prove that he was still alive, we never expected it otherwise.

We approached our last house high up on the hill, the place of Joseph the farmer. For him we had chosen a special carol. which was about the other Joseph, so that we always felt that singing it added a spicy cheek to the night. The last stretch of country to reach his farm was perhaps the most difficult of all. In these rough bare lanes, open to all winds, sheep were buried and wagons lost. Huddled together, we tramped in one another’s footsteps, powdered snow blew into our screwed-up eyes, the candles burnt low, some blew out altogether, and we talked loudly above the gale.

Crossing, at last, the frozen mill-stream - whose wheel in summer still turned a barren mechanism - we climbed up to Joseph’s farm. Sheltered by trees, warm on its bed of snow, it seemed always to be like this. As always it was late; as always this was our final call. The snow had a fine crust upon it, and the old trees sparkled like tinsel.

We grouped ourselves round the farmhouse porch. The sky cleared, and broad streams of stars ran down over the valley and away to Wales. On Slad’s white slopes, seen through the black sticks of its woods, some red lamps still burned in the windows.

Everything was quiet; everywhere there was the faint crackling silence of the winter night. We started singing, and we were all moved by the words and the sudden trueness of our voices. Pure, very dear, and breathless we sang:

As Joseph was a walking
He heard an angel sing;
‘This night shall be the birth-time
Of Christ the Heavenly King.
He neither shall be bornèd
In Housen nor in hall,
Nor in a place of paradise
But in an ox’s stall …’

And two thousand Christmases became real to us then; the houses, the halls, the places of paradise had all been visited; the stars were bright to guide the Kings through the snow; and across the farmyard we could hear the beasts in their stalls. We were given roast apples and hot mince-pies, in our nostrils were spices like myrrh, and in our wooden box, as we headed back for the village, there were golden gifts for all.

Invisible Victims: Elites, the Steamroller, and the Spiral of Silence

Excerpts from chapters 8, 9 & 10:‘The Spiral of Silence and the New McCarthyism,’ ‘Affirmative Action, the University, and Sociology,’ & ‘Elite Accommodation and the Flaws of Affirmative Action.’

Prior posts from this book: 1, 2, 3. Bibliography for all excerpts here.

From Frederick R. Lynch, Invisible Victims: White Males and the Crisis of Affirmative Action (Westport, CT: Praeger Paperback, 1991):

Chapter 8: The Spiral of Silence and the New McCarthyism

In the winter of 1982, a student whom I shall call "Bill" informed me after class that another faculty member, Professor X, was being called "racist" by a small clique of minority students. The charges had been voiced in a class taught by another faculty member and in various informal student gatherings.

"I respect Professor X," said Bill, "and I think what they're saying is bullshit. But I think he should know what's going on before it hits the fan. If he doesn't know, you should tell him."

A couple of days later, behind closed doors, I informed Professor X of the problem. He was stunned, saddened, and, not least of all, afraid. Professor X had received tenure the year before. But tenure was a thin shield against charges of racism and we both knew it. Initially, Professor X had absolutely no idea how such charges could have come his way. We were both aware of the irony of my informing him of such accusations, for I had voiced fears to him and to others that I might be called "racist" because of my research on affirmative action. (See "Doing Affirmative Action Research in California" at the end of Chapter 9.)

There was no formal complaint, no hearing before the dean or anything else. Just name-calling, which faded away. But the effects lingered on.

In 1988, I asked Professor X to re-assess the matter. He had no trouble recalling the event. He ascribed the incident to four minority students' misperceptions of his lectures on family structure and mobility. He had cited research in class which indicated that having large numbers of children at an early age -- especially out of wedlock -- was likely to inhibit upward social mobility. The four minority students, schooled in other classes against

[p.109]

"blaming the victim," thought Professor X was doing just that and attacking their way of life. Not coincidentally, Professor X remarked, the accusing students had received low grades in previous courses they had taken from him.

This behind-the-scenes name-calling heightened Professor X's sensitivity. Already shy about mentioning matters of race to student audiences, he now rarely, if ever, mentions race as a variable in social research in his classroom. In spite of the fact that race and ethnicity often appear in the statistical data of his subject matter, Professor X prefers to "leave such matters to the text." When it comes to race, Professor X censors himself. Professor X is hardly alone. Most other social scientists and university faculty have felt the chill.

Self-censoring, "chilled" faculty reflect the power of ideological taboos that have dominated American intellectual discourse for nearly twenty years. Yet "chilled" and "taboos" are not quite sufficiently precise terms to understand how intellectual thought in America has been self-censored. The steamroller metaphor set forth in the first chapter comes somewhat closer to the process of what has happened. But there are more precise concepts to understand how people have perceived what they can and cannot discuss, regardless of public opinion.

Attempts to ignore or suppress Stanley Greenberg's research by politicians and the mass media suggest some degree of formal censorship. Far more powerful than formal censorship has been massive, informal censorship, which German sociologist Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann has aptly termed the "spiral of silence." The spiral of silence, in turn, must be linked with another reinforcing concept, cognitive dissonance. The operation of both of these processes has produced what is best described as a New McCarthyism.

THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE

Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann's spiral of silence theory attempts to explain how people may misperceive public opinion because one faction feels much freer than others to speak out in support of its views. The more vocal group's views, in fact, may not be the majority; nevertheless, they may become the majority, or considerably increase their numbers, because the populace perceives such openly expressed views as the majority and wishes to conform to the supposed majority view (1974; 1977; 1984).

Noelle-Neumann maintains that human beings are strongly attuned to the opinions of others. This sensitivity to public opinion is like a "social skin." Public opinion can be a potent source of social control in that most people find it more comfortable to conform to majority opinion. A long history of scholarship, coupled with more recent social psychological experiments, strongly suggests that people prefer to change their views rather than differ from majority opinion. Since we are social beings, humans fear isolation.

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Noelle-Neumann acknowledged her indebtedness to Alexis de Tocqueville's concept of the "tyranny of the majority." But Noelle-Neumann wished to see how a majority opinion may arise out of a minority viewpoint. The process may build in a spiral, that is, the perceived majority group becomes even more emboldened to speak out while those not so perceived progressively go mute. Hence the spiral of silence.

Noelle-Neumann's initial interest in the spiral of silence occurred in the context of German elections in the late 1960s. Public opinion polls showed public support evenly divided between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats. Yet a student of Noelle-Neumann quickly removed a "Social Democrat" button from her coat because she had encountered too much hostility. The student had falsely perceived that she was being labeled as a proponent of an unpopular cause. Though she had the support of at least half the public, the student was made to feel quite otherwise. Those who supported the opposition were vociferous in their support and behaved as if public opinion were with them. In describing the political confrontation between the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats in Germany at the end of the 1960s, Noelle-Neumann noted that originally there was an even split between the two parties.

Those who were convinced the new Ospolitik was right thought their beliefs eventually would be adopted by everyone. So these people expressed themselves openly, and self-confidently defended their views. Those who rejected the Ospolitik felt themselves left out; they withdrew, and fell silent.

This very restraint made the view that was receiving vocal support appear to be stronger than it really was and the other view weaker. Observations made in one context spread to another and encouraged people either to proclaim their views or to swallow them and keep quiet until, in a spiraling process, the one view dominated the public scene and the other disappeared from public awareness as its adherents became mute. This is the process that can be called a "spiral of silence." (1984: 5)

I shall not and cannot statistically test Noelle-Neumann's spiral of silence concept as it applies to public opinion on affirmative action. Nevertheless, the concept fits much of the data contained in this book and is a useful, sensitizing tool in understanding public opinion on affirmative action.

Data on public opinion cited in Chapter 2 decisively demonstrate that the majority of Americans have been overwhelmingly opposed to affirmative action as quotas or preferential treatment. Yet interview data gathered here and elsewhere show that people perceive the pro-quota viewpoint as the majority viewpoint. Why? The spiral of silence suggests an answer.

It became obvious to the student interviewers and to me that we were cutting in on the spiral of silence simply by interviewing the thirty-two white males. It was sometimes even more obvious in background conversations with corporate officials or other corporate or government insiders. People were surprised to be asked about "the other side" of affirmative action.

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The vast majority of views they had heard or read were either pro-affirmative action or held that it was a non-debatable issue, which had already been decided. As Noelle-Neumann had described, they had detected what they thought was the predominant opinion on the issue and acted accordingly. Thus, those interviewed for this study (and those quoted in secondary sources as well) were guarded and hesitant in stating anti-quota views even to friends and co-workers. They did not know that anti-quota views have been the majority.

Affirmative action proponents have been able to accelerate the spiral of silence because they have been able to invoke collective guilt over past treatment of blacks in the United States. They have been able to target opponents as racists. The mass media were largely silent on affirmative action or took a pro-affirmative action stance. No wonder, then, most of those interviewed for this book felt their critical views of affirmative action were not held by a majority of Americans. Indeed, only two knew of public opinion polls on the issue at all, and only one of the two had an accurate idea of the results.

To compare a hypothetical contemporary situation with that which inspired Noelle-Neumann's interest in the spiral of silence: imagine an American college student wearing a button which stated "Get Rid of Affirmative Action Quotas" The results would be at least as provocative as those encountered by the German student who wore the "wrong" political button.

THE ROLE OF COGNITIVE DSSONANCE

Cognitive dissonance has reinforced the spiral of silence on affirmative action. Cognitive dissonance occurs when two cognitive elements clash: two opposing attitudes, or an attitude and a contradictory situation, (Zajonic, 1968). In the case of affirmative action, cognitive dissonance can easily arise when the values of equality are juxtaposed with the history of unequal treatment of blacks. The ideal of equality and the legacy of slavery and discrimination contradict each other. This conflict generates tension, embarrassment, and guilt in the minds of most Americans.

People have a tendency to try to assuage guilt and resolve dissonance. Therefore, egalitarian or compensatory programs aimed at redressing past discrimination have a natural appeal in restoring cognitive balance: the imbalance and guilt caused by discrimination against blacks in the face of American commitments to equality can be eased by efforts to make up for past discrimination. Obviously, cognitive dissonance has been a powerful tool for proponents of affirmative action of all types. This is one reason affirmative action debates almost always focus upon blacks rather than the other minority groups (Hispanics, Filipinos, Pacific Islanders, Asian/Indians, and so forth) who have quietly been included in many race-conscious programs.

[p.112]

Cognitive dissonance over past treatment of blacks is woven into nearly every argument for and against affirmative action from settings of private discourse to the professional literature. Evidence of this same tension and guilt surfaced in varying degrees with nearly all interviews with white males conducted for this book. Manning Greene specifically used the term "cognitive dissonance" in explaining the awkward and embarrassed response of his friends. Other subjects mentioned past discrimination against blacks but protested that they were not responsible for this and that the current generation of white males should not suffer for the sins of the past. And, as mentioned in previous chapters, there were the obligatory neutralizations: "I'm not a racist, but. . . ."

This climate of intimidation and guilt cannot be overstated with regard to the expression of critical views on affirmative action. As was seen in the previous chapter, this social psychological setting was fostered by the neglect of affirmative action as an issue by the mass media.

Noelle-Neumann maintained that the role of the mass media in fostering a spiral of silence is complex and crucial. The previous chapter demonstrated that the mass media ignored and avoided affirmative action as an issue and avoided or sought to neutralize the policies' impact on white males. Public opinion polls on the issue were not well publicized. Instead, the media have highlighted the contradiction between past treatment of blacks and the ideal of equality.

THE OLD AND THE NEW McCARTHYISM: PARALLELS

The post-World War Two phenomenon known as McCarthyism would seem to be a good illustration of the spiral of silence. Though Joseph McCarthy and anti-communist movements spawned by him never obtained the support of a majority of Americans, vocal anti-communist minorities nevertheless had enormous impact. Anti-McCarthyism opinion was chilled by individual fears of being labeled "communist."

The social forces suppressing criticism of affirmative action for the past twenty years have been strikingly similar to processes underpinning 1950s McCarthyism. First and foremost is the climate of fear and intimidation generated by both McCarthyism and affirmative action. The steamroller metaphor fits both phenomena well. Name-calling and guilt-by-accusation were employed with deadly effects by both anti-communist groups in the 1950s and by pro-affirmative action people in the 1970s and 1980s. In the heyday of McCarthyism, people feared being labeled "communist" or "fellow-traveler." As we have seen in previous chapters, affirmative action critics have been fearful of being called racist for so much as raising questions about such policies. […]

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A conflict perspective on both affirmative action and McCarthyism is that both phenomena were manipulated by political and economic elites. Michael Rogin has argued that elites also capitalized upon McCarthyism (Rogin, 1967). Rogin contended that McCarthyism was not an irrational, agrarian, populist, anti-elitist movement produced by "structural strain." It was not a revolt against the elite, for some elites backed McCarthy. McCarthy did have "real support at the grass roots," with Catholic Democratic workers and southerners. But McCarthyism drew much of its power from conservative business elites and conservative Southern senators. McCarthy and his supporters were countenanced by moderate Republicans and even supported to some extent by liberal Democratic elites.

Fred Cook also concluded that elites either backed McCarthyism or simply withered in the face of it:

On the highest levels of intellect and leadership, the abdication of responsibility was all but complete. The Democratic-liberal establishment, which should have provided a rallying point, virtually disintegrated before the first onslaught and sought to camouflage itself by riding to the hounds with the foe. (Cook, 1971: 18)

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The virulent fanaticisms of the past were truly fringe movements; they did not have behind them the power and prestige of the respectable and influential in American society. McCarthyism was different. It had the all-out support of ultraconservative big business interests in rebellion against the twentieth century." (1971: 570)

If one substitutes "Republican-business establishment" for "liberal-Democratic establishment" in Cook's first paragraph, the paragraph aptly depicts the non-response to affirmative action. In the second paragraph, "affirmative action" can be substituted for "McCarthyism" and "ultraliberal political, academic, and mass media interests" for "ultraconservative big business interests." In chapter 10, it will be seen that a small number of institutional elites (notably in civil rights, the media, and government) promoted affirmative action, while other major elites acquiesced.

Whatever the role of elites in affirmative action and McCarthyism, the general parallels are strong. There is no denying the official bullying, the baiting and labeling, the manipulation of guilt and fear, the complicity of the media and institutional paralyses produced by both McCarthyism and affirmative action. Both were personnel screening practices designed with honorable intentions, though the means were less than honorable. Both processes could dissolve into crazes with lasting results: even today, employees of state universities in California must sign a "loyalty oath," a holdover from McCarthyist fervor. And both movements could run over victims who were too startled and disheartened to raise a protest while co-workers and friends looked the other way.

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Chapter 9: Affirmative Action, the University, and Sociology

"It is an unlovely spectacle," columnist George Will has written.

White lawyers and editorial writers telling blue-collar whites that promotions or jobs or seniority systems must be sacrificed in the name of racial reparations. It calls to mind Artemus Ward's jest during the Civil War: "I have already given two cousins to the war, and I stand prepared to sacrifice my wife's brother rather than the rebellion be not crushed." (1985: 96)

Will might have added sociologists to the list of those instructing white males on the goodness of self-sacrifice on the altar of group equality. White males caught in the web of affirmative action are likely to receive scorn from sociologists and like-minded academicians.

Sociologists' antagonism towards the established middle classes comes somewhat naturally. In part, this antagonism toward the middle classes stems from the clash of collectivist assumptions of sociology with the individualist values of American society. But there are other inherent reasons as well. Peter Berger (1967) has pointed out that sociologists tend to be inherently distrustful; their studies may debunk respectable middle-class views of the world. Furthermore, sociologists value cultural relativism, a cosmopolitan view in which no culture is seen as inherently better than another. Since Berger's analysis, anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois sentiments among sociologists have intensified.

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In analyses of affirmative action, anti-middle-class biases slide easily into anti-white bias and rationalization of whites' individual injuries.

Sociologists are ill-disposed to see any genuine grievances among whites caused by affirmative action. Indeed, some sociologists have begun to posit a "new racism" amongst whites. With this newer, more sophisticated racism, white males excuse their economic and occupational failures by scape-goating blacks. Whites who express hostility to affirmative action quotas or minorities are dismissed as believers in antiquated individualism who do not understand the collective realities of stratification and the need for collective remedies.

James R. Kluegel proclaimed this view in the title of his article, "If There Isn't a Problem, You Don't Need a Solution: The Bases of Contemporary Affirmative Action Attitudes" (1985). Stanley Greenberg suggested the "new racism" explanation for white males' opposition to affirmative action in his comments for a Los Angeles Times article on "Racism Runs Deep" (March 8, 1987). Having described Greenberg's findings as showing that "dozens of white blue-collar workers around Detroit . . . blame their own hard times on blacks," the reporters quoted Greenberg as stating, "They [white males] feel the government that was supposed to protect them has instead given everything away to the blacks: Blacks get the jobs, blacks get the welfare; blacks get the loans. . . . They have no historical memory of racism, no tolerance for present efforts to offset it."

The reporters and Greenberg conveniently forgot to add: "present efforts" at whose expense?

Even Marxist-oriented, conflict theorists cannot see the class and age lines of cleavage inherent in affirmative action. They see no legitimacy in the complaints of white males toward such policies. (When I discussed the interviewing for this study, a Midwestern sociologist sniffed with disgust that the reverse discrimination reports of white males might have any merit: "Of course, you realize they'll probably be alibiing." And when a famous Marxist criminologist visited the campus where I taught, he asked about the nature of my current research. When I informed him about my studies of white males and affirmative action, he dismissed the results of the study in advance with a one-liner: "I'll bet your white males were angry." He then changed the subject.)

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Chapter 10: Elite Accommodation and the Flaws of Affirmative Action

How did controversial social policy that lacked public support nonetheless become institutionalized? That has been a central question of this book. Chapter by chapter, a number of contributing factors have emerged: the individual and collective silence of the victims; the influence of sex-role behavior upon silence; the collective guilt and individual fear of being labeled racist; the elusive and capricious implementation of affirmative action policies; the ideological bias and self-censorship among the mass media and the social sciences; the spiral of silence; the New McMarthyism; and the craze-like behavior.

Affirmative action has evolved as a set of programs imposed from the top down, over and against public opinion. In this chapter, I wish to focus upon the question of how and why those in positions of power and influence -- the elites -- formulated or at least went along with affirmative action and other race-preference programs.

A standard starting point in examining the role of elites in American life is C. Wright Mills classic study, The Power Elite (1956). Mills's framework, augmented by a recent attitude survey of elites by Verba and Orren (1985), provides a useful portrait of the role of elites in affirmative action policy.

In Mills's view, by the 1950s, a century of economic and political centralization produced three major institutional hierarchies in American society: the large corporations, the executive branch of government, and the military. By the term power elite, Mills meant "those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events

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are decided, the power elite are those who decide them" (1956: 18). Legislative bodies such as the Congress, Mills maintained, had been reduced to the "middle levels of power."

Mills made clear that he saw no well-organized, coherent, unified ruling class. His was a structural analysis of power, not conspiracy theory. What unity existed amongst the elite was due to two factors. First, the elite was ''composed of men of similar origin and education. . . . There were psychological and social bases for their unity, resting upon the fact that they were of similar social type and leading to the fact of their easy intermingling" (1956: 19). Second, the corporate, government, and military sectors were brought together by similar economic and structural interests, most notably, "the development of a permanent war establishment by a privately incorporated economy inside a political vacuum" (1956: 19).

Mills's analysis is useful for this study in that Mills emphasized that: (1) elites are structurally interrelated, and (2) power lies in decision-making. Those who are in the top "command posts" of the major institutional hierarchies can make decisions of enormous consequence with few, if any, democratic checks on such powers. Mills was one of the first social scientists to discern the emergence of centralized, administrative power and rule in society.

Indeed, administrative law is the fastest-growing body of law in the land. The powers wielded by top corporate and government administrators have expanded greatly since Mills wrote The Power Elite. So vast are these powers that Allan Bloom has stated that an "administrative state" has replaced politics (1987: 85). Were he alive today, I suspect Mills would concur. (On the importance of administrative law, see Vago, 1988.)

Mills's emphasis on the giant administrative power wielded by the heads of major corporate and government institutions can be supplemented by a more recent study of elites by Verba and Orren (1985). Fortunately, for purposes of this study, Verba and Orren were specifically concerned with the attitudes of elites towards equality. They collected data on attitudes toward equality from 2,762 institutional leaders in nine elite sectors: business, organized labor, farming, civil rights organizations, feminist groups, political parties, intellectuals, the mass media, and a sample of college seniors at ten elite colleges (1985). Unfortunately, Verba and Orren ignored elites in the executive branch and military, two of Mills's three major organizational hierarchies. However, it can be reasonably assumed that the elites in the military have remained conservative. As for elites in the federal bureaucracy, it has already been seen that they have tended to be quite liberal and activist on matters of affirmative action.

On the other hand, Verba and Orren's addition of elites in the mass media and the intellectuals as well as the "challenging elites" in civil rights and feminist organizations is overdue. (Verba and Orren also included labor leaders in their survey of elites. Mills contended that the labor elites' powers

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were derived from legitimation and protection by elites in government. In the case of affirmative action, we shall see that unions usually went along with corporate or government administrators. Only rarely did unions take action on behalf of white males.)

Verba and Orren confirmed Mills's views on the social backgrounds of elites. The elites were mostly white, male, and college educated. Leaders of civil rights organizations, however, were nearly all black and the feminist elites were mostly female. Yet homogeneity of background did not produce a unified outlook on equality or programs to remedy inequality. Verba and Orren found persistent polarities of attitudes between those elites aligned with the Democrats, on the one hand, and Republicans, on the other. Democrats saw poverty and racism as a result of "the system," while Republicans saw such inequalities in individual terms. Democrat-aligned elites favored more government intervention to assist the poor, but few wished to impose equality of results through the use of quotas. In choosing between more traditional equality of opportunity versus the newer and more radical equality of results, Verba and Orren found that the majority of leaders opted for the former:

American leaders on both the left and the right share the basic view that individuals may in fact deserve to be unequal in results, because of their own failures. The equality debate in America, therefore, is not over whether anyone really deserves to be at the bottom or whether the losers are always worthy of help from the government, but over whether those currently at the bottom are the ones who deserve to be there, and thus whether the government should assist them. (1985: 83)

Quotas for blacks and women in jobs and education were overwhelmingly rejected by all elites except those of civil rights organizations and feminists. Three out of four black leaders and a majority of feminist leaders supported the use of quotas for blacks in jobs and education. On quotas for women, blacks approved, but feminist leaders split down the middle. As for other liberal groups: "Democrats, youth, labor, and intellectuals, who blame the system for black poverty almost as much as black and feminist leaders do, nevertheless deplore the use of quotas" (1985: 84).

In addition, Verba and Orren found that the elites ranked national priorities differently, and most put race and gender equality towards the bottom of the list.

American leaders give different priorities to equality as a national goal, particularly to equality for women and for blacks. . . . Gender equality appears at or near the bottom of the ratings more often than any other goal. Half of the groups place it last, and everyone but feminist leaders, who rank it first, and youth place it among the three lowest categories. Equality for blacks does not fare much better. . . . Only blacks rate it near the top. (1985: 120)

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ATTITUDES VERSUS BEHAVIOR ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Based upon Verba and Orren's work, affirmative action quotas can hardly be seen as the product of a consensus agreed upon by national leaders. On the contrary, most elite members opposed quotas, and the elites were split on a variety of related issues.

Yet there is no question of the imposed-from-above nature of affirmative action. Capaldi (1985) even likens the process to fascist-imposed "reform." What, then, was the role of elites in the affirmative action revolution?

Verba and Orren's study contains a major flaw common to attitude studies: the gap between attitudes and actual behavior.

Did elites behave in a manner consistent with anti-quota attitudes? The data presented in Chapter 3 strongly suggest that they did not. Especially in the years since Verba and Orren's survey (1976-77), corporate and political elites appear to have yielded with minimal resistance to quotas imposed by judges or federal agencies. More than that: corporations and government agencies have initiated their own affirmative action quota procedures. Representatives of the corporate and business communities have been filing friends-of-the-court briefs exclusively on the side of pro-affirmative action forces in the Supreme Court.

Why?

A CONVERGENCE OF ORGANIZATIONAL INTERESTS ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

A fusion of economic and bureaucratic interests can be seen in the contemporary acceptance of affirmative action procedures.

The desire to "do something" about the minority poor gained initial impetus in the wake of searing urban disturbances -- Watts, Detroit, Newark -- in the 1960s. There was a sense of crisis and fears of economic and racial polarization (Jencks, 1985b). Hiring more blacks at General Motors and in government agencies in Detroit, for example, could clearly be seen by elites as a tactic for cooling urban unrest and bringing members of the underclass into the system.

Once affirmative action rules were formulated, organizations subject to equal opportunity regulations expediently accepted such plans and procedures as routine overhead expenses. Simply in terms of risk management, it has been easier to put up with affirmative action paperwork than to risk harrassment by government agencies, lawsuits, and bad press. A given number of affirmative action hires, who do not perform on a par with non-affirmative action hires, can be tolerated (Jencks, 1985b; Murray, 1984a).

A case that illustrates all of this was Sears, Roebuck and Co.'s victory in a protracted struggle with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Sears prevailed largely because the corporation had implemented its

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own vigorous quota plan in the 1970s.

Business and government entities have learned to live with, even embrace, affirmative action. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose 1,800,000 members include thousands of small businesses typically hostile to government regulation, took no position in the Santa Clara case. Many business organizations filed amicus curiae briefs supporting the program and praised the Supreme Court ruling.

The reason for the business support is simple: a tough affirmative action program now can stave off expensive discrimination suits later. Sears, Roebuck and Co. has spent 15 years fighting charges by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, first in administrative proceedings, then in court. The trial alone lasted 10 months in 1984-85. The 806-store retailer refuses even to reveal how much it spent on lawyers, though it gives a hint. Expenses, including hiring statisticians, sociologists and other expert witnesses, came to $6.8 million and one can guess fees to attorneys were probably at least twice that much.

Sears finally won at trial -- the judgement is on appeal -- against a charge that its female employees tend to be concentrated in lower-paying sales jobs than men because of discrimination. The company's chief litigator in the case . . . specifically credits the court victory to a race-and-sex-conscious hiring program Sears started in 1968 for its work force, now at 300,000. "They have the best," declares Morgan. "Out of every two job openings at Sears they filled one with a black or a woman."

Governments, especially in large cities, similarly view affirmative action plans as a small price to pay for political harmony. (Insight, April 27, 1987: 9)

Yet Sears's victory was a long and costly one: twelve years and $20 million. "The transcript of the 10-month trial in the last case alone is 15 feet high. At one point, Sears employed 250 people full time to compile information, some of it dating back to 1960, to meet EEOC investigatory demands" (Weiner, 1986).

Many other corporations simply capitulated to EEOC rather than drag out negotiations and court contests. When EEOC won a landmark 1973 discrimination settlement with American Telephone and Telegraph, EEOC tried to run up the score with charges against General Electric Co., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp. and the United Auto Workers. GE settled in 1978 for $32 million for training programs, payments to employees and other steps. Ford's 1980 settlement cost $23 million, and GM's pact in 1983, with the UAW as co-signatory, is about $42.5 million. (Weiner, 1986)

Therefore, it makes economic sense to maintain in-house quota programs, even if a corporation must tolerate a number of unqualified or incompetent workers.

In 1985, the National Association of Manufacturers voted a fresh endorsement of affirmative action. Monsanto and DuPont also have strong affirmative action plans in place and like it that way. Personnel executive

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David Buchanan of the Ford Motor Company has stated, "Business decided that affirmative action is the right thing to do. It has become a way of life" (U.S. News and World Report, June 17, 1985: 67).

The use of race-and-gender quotas to ward off legal action by government agencies or lawsuits by members of minority groups had a catch until 1987: the counter-threats of reverse-discrimination lawsuits by white employees. However, in 1987, by a 6-3 decision in Johnson v. Transportation Agency of Santa Clara, the Supreme Court upheld preferential treatment for women based upon numerical under-representation. That decision seemingly released employers from the threat of reverse discrimination lawsuits. But the court's most recent decision in Richmond v. Croson (1989), again opened the door to legal redress by whites. In its Richmond decision, the 6-3 majority held that even the use of "benign quotas" likely violates the rights of white males. The court also cast doubt upon the use of any preferences where there was no evidence of intentional, past discrimination against specific minorities.

Nevertheless, as emphasized in the opening chapter of this book, white males very rarely win reverse discrimination lawsuits; the Bakke and Johnson cases have been the exceptions, not the rule. Reports in this study and in press reports suggest that the EEOC takes a skeptical view of reverse discrimination claims. Employers and educational institutions have undoubtedly become aware of this. It will take several more decisions similar to Richmond before the legal odds change. In the meantime, elites and their institutions clearly have the upper hand. And they know it.

ELITES, THE STEAMROLLER, AND THE SPIRAL OF SILENCE

Though most of those interviewed in the Verba and Orren survey rejected quotas and equality of results, there was a split in views on whether the system or the individual was to blame for poverty situations. Verba and Orren found that a "system-is-to-blame" belief concerning black and female inequality was shared by majorities of Democrat-inclined elites and amongst smaller factions in other elites.

Verba and Orren's finding of a split in the system-is-to-blame philosophy only partially confirms Charles Murray's more sweeping description of a transformation of elite wisdom in the 1960s. Murray argued that the shift moved elite thinking from blaming the victim to blaming the system (1984b). Verba and Orren's findings indicate that a blaming-the-system outlook gained a sufficient number of vocal, elite adherents who intimidated opponents of race-conscious remedies and inhibited organized opposition: the spiral of silence.

To draw a parallel between the behavior of elites and white males interviewed for this study: it is probable that elites have been ignorant of -- or have misperceived -- the consensus in public opinion opposing the use of

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quotas. This is especially likely since, according to Verba and Orren, most of the elites ranked equality for blacks and women as a low-priority issue. Issues of low importance typically do not merit much attention and analysis. Since elites did not devote much attention to equality issues, it is reasonable to posit that, when they did, they assumed the vociferous minority and women's groups -- through a quietly sympathetic mass media -- were articulating popular views. Thus, it is likely that Elisabeth Noelle-Neuman's concept of the "spiral of silence" applies equally well to attitudes amongst elites as to attitudes amongst the public at large.

The twin forces of the spiral of silence and the New McCarthyism would have much greater impact among the elites more than among rank-and-file citizens. A major corporate or government leader obviously has a great deal to lose from being tagged as a "racist." Not only might the stigma become attached to the person, but also to the corporation. (One personnel officer interviewed as a background source for this study admitted that he did not discuss affirmative action outside the corporation because he feared that a slip might get not only him but his corporation in trouble.)

In his discussion of Congress's behavior toward affirmative action, sociologist Nathan Glazer implied a spiral-of-silence situation. "In Congress a point of view that may well reflect the opinions of a minority holds sway. The protection of affirmative action is in the hands of Congressmen who care, reflecting the views of civil rights organizations; most others stay away from the issue" (1988: 107).

In his discussion of Congress's behavior toward affirmative action, sociologist Nathan Glazer implied a spiral-of-silence situation. "In Congress a point of view that may well reflect the opinions of a minority holds sway. The protection of affirmative action is in the hands of Congressmen who care, reflecting the views of civil rights organizations; most others stay away from the issue" (1988: 107).

To be exposed to charges of "racism" is terrible public relations for a corporation or government agency. There is little doubt that corporate and government elites remain wary of such labels and judge that going along with affirmative action, whatever the attendant costs, is less costly in terms of the public's goodwill than being labeled racist or sexist.

Elite accommodation to affirmative action preferences, then, can be explained in terms of good public relations, coupled with a desire for stability and "industrial peace" with government agencies and minority/women's groups. Elites are also aware that the odds for legal action by individual white males are small and that the chances for a white male winning a reverse discrimination lawsuit are even smaller. There has been no organized recognition of white males' grievances by major political groups. Following affirmative action preferences directives, then, has been the line of least resistance.

Omitted from this equation was the damage done to white workers and the continued oversight of serious legal and sociological flaws in affirmative action.

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IMMIGRATION-WITH-PREFERENCE PARADOX

Most affirmative action debate has been centered on the black/white dimension, far less often on the male/female dimension. The increasing list of preferred non-black minorities also has been ignored by the social sciences and the print and television media. A strategic reason for focus upon blacks has been the obvious history of discrimination and deep sense of national guilt. The black/white issue is thus the strongest possible case for affirmative action advocates. Even affirmative action critics wind up fighting proponents on this emotionally charged turf (see, for example, Glazer, 1975; Murray, 1984a, 1984b; Capaldi, 1985; Bloom, 1987). High-visibility debate concerning affirmative action for non-black minorities is next to nonexistent.

Contrary to Nathan Glazer's recent reappraisal of affirmative action (Glazer, 1988), many non-black minorities have been, and continue to be, included in affirmative action programs: the numerous Hispanic groups (Mexicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, and so forth), Pacific Islanders, American Indians, Asian/Indians, Filipinos, Vietnamese, Cambodians, and homosexuals.

Why have so few people asked directly: on what basis do these groups ground their claims for redress through quotas, preferential treatment, or proportional representation? On what basis do we include some groups and exclude others? Especially when many, if not most, of these groups have only recently arrived in significant numbers in the United States?

The omission of non-black minorities from discussion of affirmative action becomes even more extraordinary in view of recent immigration history: by including non-black minorities, one obtains a curious immigration-with-preference paradox.

Most of the government-preferred non-black minorities were present in the United States only in relatively small numbers before 1970. Historical measurement of the Hispanic population is plagued with definitional problems in census procedures, especially prior to 1970. But the numbers of

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Hispanics in this nation have been relatively small until the recent large-scale and sustained immigration from Mexico and other Hispanic nations (Moore and Pachon, 1985: 24). […]

Aside from those of Chinese and Japanese ancestry, most Asians in this nation are foreign-born: of the 2,539,800 persons living in the United States who were born in Asia, 47 percent immigrated here in the period from 1975 to 1980; 22.4 percent from 1970 to 1974; 12.0 percent from 1965 to 1969, and 6 percent from . 1960 to 1964. The remaining 12.5 percent immigrated here before 1960.

Another example: for U.S. citizens born in India, 43.7 percent migrated here during 1975 to 1980, and another 33.1 percent from 1970 to 1974.

The point of all this is obvious: why should recent immigrants be given preference over native-born American citizens? What does the United States owe these newly arrived immigrants?

This curious immigration-with-preference paradox, in fact, becomes more astonishing when one realizes that the situation can operate -- and probably has operated -- on a same-day basis: a non-citizen, either legally or with forged credentials, can cross the border and immediately become eligible for affirmative action preference. Incredibly, the immigration-with-preference paradox rarely, if ever, surfaced in the public debates surrounding recent immigration reforms.

Employers have recently discovered that the new immigration act has placed them in something of a dual dilemma: they may be fined for hiring illegal aliens but sued for discrimination if they refuse to hire a worker with dark skin. On the other hand, especially when immigrants may work for lower pay than citizens, affirmative action might provide a useful device to

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give preference to legal or illegal immigrants and, thereby, fulfill affirmative action quotas at the expense of citizens. Only rarely has this phenomenon been examined. […]

This emperor-has-no-clothes quality regarding group preferences for non-black ethnics leads one to wonder just how social scientists have avoided the issue. […] Most social scientists and policy makers have ignored the multiplication of "protected groups" in the United States.

Thomas Sowell has wryly observed that the number of "protected groups" in the United States has multiplied to the extent that 70 percent of the population is covered by some form of affirmative action (1985: 14).

None of the white males interviewed for this study nor any of the personnel or affirmative action officers with whom I conducted background discussions had even thought of the immigration-with-preference dilemma. No one knew quite what to say when I raised the issue.

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