Concerning Blacks And Affirmative Action:

Alan L. Joplin

Over the past four decades, the Federal Government has demonstrated a growing concern for the rights of minorities, after nearly three quarters of a century of governmental indifference. The courts have led the way, providing substantive civil rights meaning to the broadconstitutional mandates of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. The Executive branch followed, through a series of Executive Orders by the last six Presidents, directing Federal departments and agencies to assure against discrimination in their own activities and in the practices of those with whom they deal.

Congress was the last of the three branches to act. Since 1957, Congress has enacted five Civil Rights Laws, including the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the fair Housing Law of 1968. Equal employment opportunity is mandated by a host of Federal enactment's, statutes, judicial decisions interpreting the Constitution, and Executive Orders and regulations. Together, these enactment's constitute a comprehensive ban on job discrimination, covering Federal, State and Local jobs and nearly all private employment. Almost any act of discrimination by government or private employer violates some aspect of Federal Law. The remedies available to redress such discrimination, however, vary widely in their scope and efficacy." Summary, The Federal Civil Rights Enforcement Effort," A Report of the United States Commission on Civil Rights 1971, p. 1, Clearinghouse Publication No. 31, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC. Cited hereafter as " Summary "

AN HISTORICAL COMPENDIUM

To understand the casual roots and sustaining conditions of discrimination and disadvantagement that minorities in general, and Blacks in particular, have encountered in America requires a succinct review of American history. What emerges in the conclusion, is that the economic and employment disadvantagement of the Black American is not a single issue, but a composite of interrelated issues.

The Black man is not a recent arrival to American society and cannot be expected to repeat the cycle of assimilation and social mobility which many immigrant groups experienced. The Blackman's exclusion is not a matter of cultural
strangeness bred in a foreign land, but rather a product of American society--the decades and centuries of political disfranchisement and de factosegregation.

CONCERNING BLACKS AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

The historical practices of employment discrimination rest not only on the denial of equal employment practices within the American social structure nor the psychological
and attitudinal prejudices manifested by the white race and perpetrated on the black race. To view employment inequalities that Black people have experienced as a product of prejudicial attitudes is to fail to recognize that patterns of exclusion are not merely psychological side issues in an otherwise sound social and economic
structure. In the context of Blacks and jobs, attitudes are relevant only insofar as they give rise to and sustain inequities in the opportunity structure which affects employment. The strategy which places attitudinal changes as the antecedents of social change neglects the significance of structural barriers limiting the
Blackman's access to job opportunities.

The employment problem experienced by many Blacks, must be viewed in several aspects of dimensions:

The context of the urban social milieu

The patterns of residential segregation that typify metropolitan and other urban areas that create an ecological
barrier

Deteriorated community and institutional facilities

The educational and skills deficiencies on the part of many Blacks

The escalating rise of unemployment and under employment, especially among blacks

The backdrop of national manpower needs and issues

Current technological advancements which are making sweeping changes in the whole structure of jobs and job opportunities

Thus, the problem of equal employment opportunity can
be relegated to an aggregate of issues and conditions
which must be addressed and in many instances rectified
if Black people are to achieve full parity in the American
social, educational and economic system.

EQUAL EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, was the result developments
on both the protest and legislative front. However,
it should be noted that as far back as the era of the
" New Deal " minorities had been protesting
the inequities that were prevalent practices in American
society.

In 1941, Executive Order 8802, established a Fair Employment
Practice Committee and decreed that there should be
no discrimination in the

CONCERNING BLACKS AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
OPPORTUNITY

Executive Order, 9346 was established to reaffirm the
governments attempt at equalizing employment opportunities.

Executive Order 10479, promulgated in 1953, reiterated
that the governments' policy was to insure support
for all qualified citizens. The committee established
under this Executive Order attempted to intensify the
fight against discrimination by; clarifying and strengthening
the nondiscrimination clause government contracts and
further developing the complaint procedure and implementing
the procedure for compliance

The most far reaching of all Executive Orders aimed
at eliminating discrimination in employment was Executive
Order 10925, issued in 1961 which established the Equal
Employment Opportunity Committee. The aims and intentions
of the order did not differ significantly in substance
from previous orders, but it did however, represent
a milestone in executive administrative action. The
new order provided for specified sanctions to be levied
in the event of non-compliance by a firm doing business
with the Government , and changed the committee to
use the tools that were available to its predecessors,
but never used by them.

These tools levied upon the committee included the authority
to; cancel government contracts to employers who practiced
discrimination; the power to block future contracts
due to non-compliance; the power to assume jurisdiction
over any complaint filed with a constricting agency
with the Government, as well as any cases pending;
to initiate inquiries or direct investigations.

Under this new mandate, emphasis was placed primarily
upon the realization that continued discrimination
in employment is a violation of basic individual rights
and interferes with the effective utilization of
nation's manpower resources. Title VII of the 1964
Civil Rights Act, provided for pragmatic coverage and
applicability to equalizing employment opportunities
beyond the federal and federally contracted employment
sector.

Title VII states, categorically, that; employment discrimination
is prohibited by employers with 25 or more employees,
labor unions with 25 or more members or those which
operate hiring halls, and employment agencies which
regularly obtain employees for an employer covered
by the title.

Other important prohibitions of the Act include;

It is an unlawful employment practice for an employment
agency to classify an individual, or to fail or refuse
to refer him for employment, or otherwise discriminate
against him on the basis of race, color, religion,
sex, or national origin.

It is an unlawful employment practice for a labor organization
to exclude a person from its membership or to discriminate
among its members in any way, or to attempt to persuade
an employer to discriminate on the basis of race, color,
religion, sex, or national origin.

CONCERNING BLACKS AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
OPPORTUNITY

Discrimination on the ground of race, color, religion,
sex, or national origin in admission to or employment
in any apprenticeship or other training program, including
on-the-job training, is prohibited.

Recrimination for opposing unfair employment practices
or for instigating or testifying in any proceeding
brought under the title are prohibited.

On the other hand the Act provides that it is not unlawful
employment practices

To employ an individual on the basis of his religion,
sex, national origin when one of those is a bona fide
occupational qualification reasonably necessary to
the normal operation of a particular establishment.

For an educational institution owned, supported, controlled
or managed by a religious organization, or one whose
curriculum is directed toward the propagation of a
particular religion, to hire and employ persons of
that religion in any of its activities.

To apply different conditions of employment, including
compensation, based on a bona fide seniority or merit
system, piece work, or job location system, so long
as the differences do not result from an intentional
act of discrimination because of race, color, sex,
religion, or national origin.

To act upon the results of a professionally developed
ability test so long as the test is not designed to
discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex.
or national origin.

AFFIRMATION ACTION

The passage of civil rights bills and executive orders
are only law a which create an environment for the
changes that are needed before full and equal employment
can be made a reality to Blacks and other minorities.
Although the " legal " right to equal employment
opportunity is broadly protected, one of the
major means for securing it

" in fact " through enforcement and penalized
non-compliance is lacking.

To this end, one of the most interesting programs in
the field of civil rights was initiated by the Vice
President, Lyndon B. Johnson during the early part
of the Kennedy Administration. The " Plans for
Progress " was a program which called for commitment
on the part of major companies, unions, and other organized
labor firms to take voluntary action in compliance
with the new civil rights acts, and to recruit, hire,
promote, pay, and train persons who had here to fore
been denied equal access to employment. Meaning, Blacks,
Spanish surnamed, and women. This program was a catalyst
for the program we commonly call today " Affirmative
Action ." Affirmative Action is a program

CONCERNING BLACKS AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
OPPORTUNITY

designed to serve as a low key enforcement mechanism,
whereby employees more or less validate their efforts
to comply with the laws and

executive orders concerning equal employment opportunities
for minorities.

Affirmative Action is a program geared to act as a check
and balance system in the personnel functions of a
organization. As such, it monitors the companies in
their efforts to fulfill the requirements stipulated
by law, that is, not to deny employment, or employment
opportunities to an individual based on race, color,
sex, religion, or national origin. Affirmative Action,
through the National Labor Relations Act, has extended
its coverage and applicability to include not only,
employers, but also employee labor unions. Employee
unions are obligated to act fairly, impartially and
without discrimination in membership solicitation and
employee representation.

The Office of Contract Compliance (OFCC) has responsibility
for coordinating and overseeing the entire Federal
Contract Compliance Program. Recently, the OFCC has
issued directives defining affirmative action requirements
to its contractors. Although affirmative action programs
have been established by a majority of business in
America, more efforts should be focused on enforcement
and amelioration of discriminatory employment practices.

PRESENT STATE OF THE ART

Generally, civil rights laws have been most successful
in dealing with practices that do not require complex
institutional change. The desegregation of the public
accommodations, hospitals, and other facilities required
basic, but simple changes in conduct, and was accomplished
without massive opposition or Federal enforcement.
In fields where complex institutional change is required,
and there has been little direct intervention in the
part of the Federal Government, progress has been slow
in coming and in some instances it can barely be discerned.

In the employment field, elimination of discriminatory
practices to facilitate full participation of minority
group members in the Nation's economic mainstream has
proved to be a complex process. Minorities are still
grossly under-represented in the higher eschleon salary
brackets. Minorities are hired and locked into closed-end
jobs with little hope of achieving any substantial
growth or advancement. They are hired, promoted, and
paid on a scale that is bipartisan in scope and nature,
and which acts as a deterrent to their full participation
in the nation's economic system.

Affirmative Action programs although resolute in intent,
have not proved themselves as resolutions to the problems
that Blacks cuttingly encounter when seeking employment,
promotions or other forms of remuneration. Affirmative
action implies change and impacts upon the values and
beliefs of the controlling minority which includes
policy makers who have the basic responsibility for
the integration of such change.

CONCERNING BLACKS AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
OPPORTUNITY

PROSPECTUS

If affirmative action programs are to remain viable
and achieve their goals, that is the amelioration of
discrimination in employment and advance the rights
of all citizens to equal opportunity, a unilateral
approach consisting of substantive and coherent changes
must be applied with a conatus effort in the part of
all parties concerned. Included in this effort are
the following recommendations:

That Affirmative Action programs be relegated to a
higher status within the corporate structure and administered
by top management officials.

That the Federal government lend assistance in developing
affirmative action programs and guidelines of sufficient
breadth and specificity that it will lend itself to
a more uniform application in setting priorities and
policies toward the achievement of specified goals.

All affirmative action programs goals and guidelines
should specifically delineate the steps and procedures
by which the goals will be measured and completed.

These should include: a time table for achievement;
the way in which the program will be geared; compliance
and enforcement mechanisms spelled out in terms of
their utilization and interim evaluation dates and
revision policies relevant effort should be made on
the part of educational institutions to ensure "
Quality " education for residents of he inner-city.




Career development and career path programs should be
a built-in component of the affirmative action program.

Career planning should be initiated at every level of
employment.

Minorities should be actively recruited into training
and development programs sponsored by the organization.



Affirmative action policies and goals should under go
interim evaluation by the organization and necessary
revisions made.

There should not be any " Quota " systems
set in terms of the number of minorities hired, promoted,
or given additional training.



A measurable merit system based solely on job performance
abilities or potential should be utilized in the selection
training and hiring of minorities, based on organizational
manpower needs.

The stability and effectiveness of the Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission could be greatly enhanced by
the elimination of some fundamental weaknesses and
inadequacies in civil rights compliance, thereby making
affirmative action programs burgeoning catalyst in
the elimination of discrimination and discriminatory
practices in other areas. Some of these fundamental
weaknesses are:

CONCERNING BLACKS AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION/EQUAL EMPLOYMENT
OPPORTUNITY

Inadequate staff and other resources to conduct civil
rights enforcement

activities with maximum effectiveness.

Lack of authority and subordinate status of agency civil
rights officials.

Failure to define civil rights goals with sufficient
specificity or breadth.

Failure to coordinate civil rights and substantive programs.

Undue emphasis on voluntary compliance and failure to
make sufficient use of available sanctions to enforce
civil rights laws.

Failure to provide adequate coordination and direction
to agencies having common civil rights responsibilities.

Failure to collect and utilize racial and ethnic data
in planning and evaluating progress toward goals.

CONCLUSION

Major efforts have been made to eliminate the injust
and unfair practice of discrimination. To date full
realizations of these efforts are negligible. As our
society marches into the twenty first century, it regretfully
carries with it, some of the archaic beliefs and practices
for which we as a nation, condemn other nations for.
Through conjecture, prejudice and real or imaged threats,
a valuable resource to our nation , human resources,
has been systematically and consistently shut out.

Armed with an areas of laws, orders, and mandates, the
Government has failed to make a major impact or developed
a mechanism whereby, it can secure the rights of liberty,
justice and equality to a portion of its citizens.
America cannot be left to blunder into the future,
and attack with iconoclastic views the world of those
around her. In acknowledging and even advancing the
rights of its " minorities, " America will
be securing " its own rights."

The problems of hostile bureaucracies that view civil
rights as a threat to their own programs and prerogative
coupled with the problems of inadequate or misordered
priorities, cannot be solved through mandatory sanctions
or harsh enforcement mechanisms. The problem of discrimination
lies deep within our social structure. It has its foundation
in the very core of society and is treated as an embellishment
for others to pattern after.

Equal employment and affirmative action programs are
just small beginnings through which the compliance
of and initiation of other efforts with a similar purpose
can help to impede our rush toward economic and social
genocide.

STRATEGY FOR IMPROVING CITIES.

Alan Joplin

The problems of poverty, jobs and sub-standard housing,
are ills currently used to categorize our cities.
These are symptoms of a much larger fundamental problem--one
that is much more subtle and sophisticated. It centers
on the inability of minorities, to gain entrance
into the mainstream of the city's economic and social
life. There has always been various ways for groups
at the lower end of the social and economic scale to
improve, to get ahead and to function in an advancing
society. Clearly, this problem is related to jobs
and income, but providing jobs or guaranteeing an annual
wage will not insure that the basic, fundamental
problem of status is resolved. Unless we are able
to find ways to resolve the issues of status in the
urban community, the cities will continue to be the
source of substantial tensions, threatened by an increasingly
difficult climate for it's residents.



Sociologist, anthropologists and others have devoted
their lives to developing a basic understanding of
the fundamental problems of people and their needs.
The breakdown in the status advancement system as
we experience it today is rooted in :

1. The basic structure of the family

2. The various egos, eccentricities and prejudices.

3. The status situations, of lower income groups

4. The middle class whites in the cities who hold the key to whether low income minorities are able to participate and advance.

5. The nature of communications among people living in
the city

6. The lack of economic and social security, among the population immediately above the lowest status minorities




An analysis of what the problems are in the breakdown
of status advancement is key to determining the solutions.
Without this analysis we will always give solutions
but will they be the right ones. We will continue
to waste money and energy, and we will continue
to frustrate not only community people, but the people
and those involved in government as well. We need
to develop comprehensive methods for defining the fundamental
problems and issues that are at the root of the city's
problems as an essential part of the process of making
governmental decisions. What are these problems and
how do we go about looking at them?

It is important to point out that the way I am defining
this problem creates a unique situation for governmental
planning. I believe, the major threat to the future
welfare of minorities who, if they can get ahead in
society, will ease the problem; but if they do not,
can cause a major breakdown in the operation of the
city and the broader society of which it is an instrument.

Concentrating on this segment of the city's population
is our most important task in insuring a safe future
for others. In a very basic sense, the problems of
status advancement cannot be categorized or analyzed
simply. Governmental programs must be designed out
of an analysis of what problems need to be addressed.
Programs are created without a careful analysis
made of what the real problems are. Poorly defined
problems lead to poorly defined solutions. This is
a situation we must avoid. Let me give you a few
examples of how this works:

Housing programs and policies were created fundamentally,
to overcome the problems of poor structural conditions.
A Large segment of the housing stock across the
country was in poor physical condition. The policy
to rid the community of sub-standard housing was developed
to eliminate sub-standard housing and rebuild. The
results of this particular definition and the solutions
that sprang from it are obvious and only marginally
helpful. We provided some new housing, but we have
hardly housed the needy population , and in many instances,
the physical conditions have not even improved. The
problem definition did not take into account the frightening
social costs of involuntary relocation, the effects
on rents, the ability of families to use housing
as a tool for their own social and economic achievement.

When defining the problem of jobs for urban residents,
we continually hear that the insufficient number of
jobs and high unemployment rates can be remedied if
we can get more job opportunities into the urban areas.
If we were to build more factories, office buildings,
in and around the urban areas, the residents would
have job opportunities close at hand. Here again,
over simplification of this particular problem may
lead us to solutions that do not get to the root causes.
Providing new factory jobs in urban areas for urban
residents may not be the best way to get them into
the mainstream of the city's economic life. This is
not the growing segment of job opportunity, and to
build our plans for job development on this basis can
be misleading and potentially destructive.

In the area of education, we have done a relatively
poor job of problem definition about the urban areas.
We explain this situation by saying schools in the
urban areas are bad, and as a result of this we must
integrate and change everything around, including throwing
out the boards of education and the existing teaching
staffs. This is a response to a poorly defined
problem and does not necessarily lead to the basic
solutions that are required. Integrating the schools
may not necessarily mean the children who need to grab
on to some kind of learning experience are really going
to get it. Substituting a local group to run a school
instead of the remote board of education may well improve
the relationships between the local community and its
educators, but there is no guarantee that the children
will benefit.

I want to share with you the problems of developing
a program based on a strategy that defines the major
goal for the city as improving this complicated system
through which people move ahead and advance into the
mainstream of the city's social and economic life.
There are four major "actors" who are
dealing in one way or another with this problem. First,
there is city government. This is the government
that most city dwellers look to for the solution of
their problems, both real and imaginary and holds
itself out to be the intimate solvers of the so-called
nitty-gritty problems of the city. Faced with today's
situation, city government's orientation to its traditional
service functions and delivery systems is its major
draw back. The systems for delivering welfare, education,
housing and other massive services that have a tremendous
affect on the future of individuals who meet with them
and use them are really out-dated. These all have good
motives, but their operations are designed to deal
with situations that are not necessarily those that
are most important today.

The laws under which the city governments operate are
also major restraints. Very often there are limiting
ground rules that restrict the scope and type of operation
that city government agencies are able to undertake.
In housing, there are many good examples of this.
For instance, eligibility rules for who may get into
public housing projects have traditionally made it
difficult to house many needy families.

Bureaucratic problems are another major restraint. The
petty competitiveness of city agencies fighting with
each other for a share of the lime-light takes up a
surprising amount of the energy of government. This
phenomenon, well known to all who have ever worked
in agencies where narrow-minded competition to operate
a particular program or to support a particular function
consumes large amounts of everyone's time. Basic leadership,
guidance, support and good city management can do a
lot to overcome this particular problem, but in very
few governmental set-ups does this situation exist
today.



The change in direction of welfare services is a good
example; we are slowly beginning to move the welfare
bureaucracy from its traditional role of handing out
checks to the needy, to an agency that provides services
to help dignify and improve one's lot in life. This
has not been an easy process.

Private business and industry are also major actors.
In earlier eras in the development of the city, private
industry was the initiator of most things that happened.
Today, this is not necessarily the case because most
of the problems faced by the city are not those in
which private industry has the interests or incentives
for getting involved. Governmental policies are designed
to encourage private industry to do public jobs and
to assume the responsibilities of what was once a public
responsibility.

Our methods for subsidizing housing have clearly been
aimed in this direction; however, there is a real problem
of whether the fundamental motives in private industry
are consistent with solving the problems of the city
today. This is not to say that the motives are not
legitimate. To make a buck is an acceptable, necessary
and fundamental part of life, but the modus operandi
of private business doesn't seem to be appropriate
for solving city problems or capable of providing leadership,
resources and programs for such problem solving.

This is not to say that private industry cannot play
a key role, it can and must. The hiring practices
of industry; investment practices, such as the local
banks will grant mortgages; and the practices of the
white collar industries in particular in absorbing
a new labor force into their important career creating
opportunities, are all places in which private industry
must help the city overcome these problems. If it
was able to do this on its own without any prodding
from government this would be fine, but this has not
happened to date;and government, through its own incentives
and programs, must provide more direct and pointed
leadership in this regard. .

Local community groups and organizations are a third
actor. These may be the great hope for the future
improvement of the status advancement in the city,
but right now these groups present a chaotic picture
and a diffuse ability to act. Our current experience
of this program in the community action program has
really helped to create an important new thrust by
setting up local community corporations that are able
to organize and promote local and ethnic interests.
These community corporations have responded to the
gaping hole that has been left for the current generation
of low income people who in previous generations in
city development were helped by the church, major ethnic
organizations and major governmental institutions like
the local political boss, ward healer, police and fire
departments and other agencies of government. The
major drawback to these efforts right now is that no
very large scale and concerted programs of action have
resulted.

In most instances, the poverty programs have concentrated
on political battles, fighting the bad guys, beating
up the establishment, and otherwise developing what
may be a much needed and important part of the process
-- local energy and enthusiasm. This is all well and
good, but eventually, hopefully sooner, a specific
and pointed program of action has to emerge from these
efforts. If this were to happen quickly, a major solution
to the status advancement problem could result.

The fourth set of actors on the scene is the federal
and state governments. These are critically important
from two points of view: first, for setting the moral
tone for national policies and program priorities;
and second, for providing the resources. Right now
we are handicap on both counts. The moral leadership
of government has been put to serious and justified
question. Part of this problem is that the major resources
for the programs we have been talking about are not
forthcoming from the only source that there is. Even
if this atmosphere changes', there is a real problem
of enabling state and federal governments to deliver
the kinds of intimate services and programs that are
needed to get this status advancement system working
properly.

Where do we go from here?

My conclusions, confused and searching as they are:

* We need new sets of institutions directly aimed
at the problems of status advancement. These
must be organizations that have the energy and motivation
of the Community Action Programs of the sixties and
seventies.

* The action and organizational drive of private
enterprise, especially the best private businesses
who have the ability to achieve, not only what they
talk about, purposeful action.

* The power and knowledge of municipal government
which still sits astride the most important
areas of concern, even though it's slow and it's
credibility is nonexistent when it comes to dealing
with these problems.

* The resources and support of federal and state
governments where the dollars are.

In addition, we clearly need individual initiative particularly
on the part of people who are struggling to get ahead.
They cannot operate effectively alone, as individuals.
Low-income groups of any society have always had
to have some kind of organization to get ahead. We
need new forms, of organizations and institutions
that has an urban focus but, who are not tied to vested
interest. Where appropriate, some of these organizations
must and should have a neighborhood focus, but there
needs to be more than this. Many organizations need
a client or functional focus, such as organizations
to train or educate people of various ages. We need
many different organizations, not one huge monolithic
structure. These new corporate entities must direct
their energies toward the major areas of concern:

Education

We need a new and innovative educational system in the urban areas with a new curriculum and new relationship with other institutions such as libraries, for example, which are underutilized in most urban areas and could easily become adjuncts to the basic educational system in the neighborhoods. We need schools with dormitories attached to them in the urban areas so that the children with family problems could have some alternative living arrangements. We need a complete revamping of the educational system to tie in day camps, personnel training and a whole battery of programs to give new and tailored experiences to children whom other wise do not have such benefits.

Housing and Community Development

We need to develop new patterns of home ownership. We also need new ways of constructing housing with locally based organizations being a major force in the decision making process. We need new organizations, block associations, etc., that has developed the muscle to improve the local environment and who have a clear cut stake in the nature and quality of local urban neighborhoods.

Career Development

We must orient current job development programs towards real career opportunities, not just jobs. We must concentrate on providing through welfare or a guaranteed annual income the type of economic assistance, families in urban areas need to develop strategies that will develop careers. The minority population, must be oriented towards permanent placement in the economic and social life of the city. We need to develop minority businesses from emerging public policy programs.

New Pattern Of Social Services

Low income people are still dependent on public welfare and health services to supply many of their daily needs. This situation for many citizens will not diminish soon. The delivery of services must not be provided in such a way that people are made to feel the worse for it. The status advancement process must remove the stigmas attached to people who apply for these services

Cultural Awareness

Alan L. Joplin

Education today is engaged in a great transformation. Society is changing and man is struggling to cope with the forces change has brought and will bring. Education has been charged with the responsibility of enabling man to effectively deal with his environment now and in the future.

Educational assumptions are needed which are more complex and capable of relating to the diverse needs of students living in a pluralistic or multi-ethnic society. The purpose of the educational system according to a pluralistic model would be to prepare students for life in a multi-ethnic society and indeed a culturally diverse world.

Universities have expanded their curricula offerings to absorb the increased number of high school graduates with diverse needs and abilities. This forced educators to develop new curricula and instructional programs which made it possible for greater numbers of students to obtain a university education rather than a select few. Universities have also changed to enable educational processes to expand into diverse areas of instructional methodologies and away from the established tradition to give students an opportunity to become fully engaged in the process.

The need for experiences which will prepare students to engage the University, their community and the world effectively has become more and more apparent. It is becoming clear that a great deal of work must be done to bridge the cultural cleavages which exist in our educational institutions. Yet Universities still continue to promote the image of America as a melting pot within which individual differences are boiled down into "a single blended stew" in spite of the fact that this image is not congruent with social reality.

Many students coming in to higher education have very little understanding of social reality. They lack contact with people who exhibit life styles different from their own. They are unconscious to the extent to which individual and institutional forms of racism systematically reduce the opportunities of some groups while increasing those of others. If the reality is not recognized, then it is clear that people will continue to think in terms of stereotypes and simplistic ideas which are not complex enough to help resolve problems which are arising.

There have been a number of attempts to analyze the impact of college on students, but none of them were based on educational programs designed to build cultural awareness or cultural sensitivity. They do, however, attempt to determine the effects of college on attitudes such as prejudice, ethnocentrism, dogmatism and authoritarianism.

Developing cultural awareness is seen as one of the most urgent tasks before the educational community. This task must be conducted at all levels, allowing students to be taught by instructors of cultures not like their own, developing curriculum,and programming which will provide insights to cultural differences and provide alternative methods of classroom instruction which better fits the learning styles of all students. This represents only a part of the task, but nevertheless, a very important part and one which demands our attention.

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SOME THOUGHTS ON CITY GOVERNMENT.

Alan L. Joplin

1. ECONOMIC DIRECTION: The choices involve realignment
of the city's economic boundaries: new business frontiers
or reliance on established industries.

A. To what extent should the city's economy be oriented:
toward long term growth an the provision of quality jobs OR to short-term
growth through the, provision of a quantity of job
opportunities?

B. To what extent should the overall direction of the
city's economy be: the capitalize the economic base
through reliance on its traditionally strong features
and roles through the development of new roles
and functions?

2. ECONOMIC PURPOSE: Goal-oriented issues concerning
personal in- come and area economic product.

A. To what extent should the city government attempt
to: maximize gross area product OR personal income
through the provision of employment? To what extent should the city's economic base be directed:
toward maximizing city tax revenues OR toward maximizing
personal income through employment?

3. LOCATION PERSPECTIVE: View will affect inter-structural decisions.

A. To what extent should the city's economy and economic
development be viewed as: complimentary to OR competitive
with the rest of the region's economy? To what extent
should the city focus economic development on: the
central business district OR on sub-regional retail
commercial centers in the outer areas

4. CLIENT PERSPECTIVE: Orientation will determine types
of people in need of manpower development, education or special assistance.

A. To what extent should economic development strategy
be oriented to: those persons who are marginal labor
force participants and in the greatest need OR toward
those persons who contribute most to the city's economic
viability?

5. EMPLOYMENT AND WORKFORCE PREPARATION: Limited job
opportunities and training resources present tough
choices: to fight brush fires in saving existing jobs
in individual firms, or encourage expansion in incubating
industries; training programs for what population sectors;
school curriculums more directly defined by employers.

A. Sectors

1. Should the city take an economy-wide sector or individual
'firm' approach to dealing with the employment related problems of our
economy?

2. To what extent should the city's job development
efforts be directed to attracting new industries and
blue-collar jobs to the city as opposed to retaining
marginal or declining industries through supportive
efforts?

3. To what extent should the city concentrate on the
manufacturing sector because of its capacity to absorb
persons of differential skill levels or rely on remedial
measures and the growth potential of non-manufacturing
sectors to reduce the decline in jobs.

4. Should the city promote the growth of locally oriented,
regionally oriented Vs nationally oriented firms?

5. To what extent should job development efforts be
aimed incubator-infant firms and industries as opposed
to older, established industries?

6. Should the education sector be viewed as a source
of employment/jobs for the currently unemployed?

B. Work Skills

1. Should the city's basic approach to upgrading labor
skills be to rely on public education, special manpower
services for the unemployed or on-the-job training
programs?

2. To what extent, and how should, Davenport pursue a
'full employment' strategy; acquisition of basic skills,
work orientation through public education vs. manpower
services - special job training?

3. How much input should the business community have
in defining the curriculum of primary, secondary, vocational
and higher educational programs?

4. Should the Davenport's City administration encourage
a more manpower-oriented view of basic role of education
in Davenport or continue to view education as primarily
a means of socialization cognitive development?

5 Should Davenport shift the manpower education emphasis
away from secondary vocational education to the out-of-school
population through continuing adult education programs?

C. Access

1. What combination of jobs that are low skill/slow mobility/
low wage vs. higher skill/faster mobility/higher wage
should the city promote?

2. Should the city undertake to directly improve the
wage rate of marginal jobs (i.e., unionization) or
supplement workers' income through transfer payments

3. How should the City's job development program to
the currently "unemployable" segment be handled:
through incentives for employment or through supplemental
payments to achieve a minimum income level:

6. CITY GOVERNMENT ROLE: These issues determine what
leverage points ought to be emphasized in affecting
a strategy and will determine relations with private
sector.

A. Intervention Roles

1. How much emphasis should the city place on economy-wide
effort. i.e.,

rehabilitating infrastructure vs. intervening in the
economics of individual firms or types of firms?

2. Should the city support uneconomical private jobs
and be an employer of last resort?

3. Should the city resist the trend toward the privatization
of public functions a assume responsibility for private
functions, especially where they may be uneconomical?

4. Should the city's own hiring policies be geared to
fluctuations in the local economy to hire surplus labor
in periods of high employment locally?

B. REGIONAL

1. Should the city use the location of public facilities
as an agent of sub-regional economic development?

2. Should the city encourage the decentralization of
economic activities out side the central core through
incentives?

C. Use of City Resources

1. To what extent should the city management of bonds,
equities, pension fund, be guided by the needs of Davenport?

2. To what extend should the city invest money in already
constructed but vacant capital facilities as opposed
the constructing its own?

3. What should the city's posture as a primary purchaser
of goods and services be in relation to the small business
community here in Davenport--should they receive preference
in bidding, should it extend more liberal credit policies,
should it provide a faster payment of obligations to
local businesses?

7. INFRASTRUCTURE REQUIREMENTS: These issues were considered
because the sizes and types of requirements selected
are key to city capital investment decisions.

A. Transportation

1. Should the primary orientation of the mass transit
system be maintained and reinforced (to serve the residential areas and service functions)
or should future investments in mass transit be concentrated
on the links between residential areas and sub-centers
of economic activity outside of the Central City District?

2. How should transportation policy relate to job creation?
Should it stimulate job development in certain areas
by improving the service before the jobs are created or should it follow the creation of jobs?

3. Should improvements in the system be geared towards
the movement of people or the movement of goods?

4. Should the transportation system facilitate access
to jobs outside the city?

B. Space

1. What should be done about mixed residential-industrial
areas? Should they be maintained or should the balance
be changed? If so, should housing get the priority
or should industrial expansion get it?

2. Should new industrial areas be created or should old
ones be expanded?

3. Should the city decentralize the location of public
facilities?

4. In terms of space for expansion of businesses, should
the city concentrate on an individual firm or group
of firms approach or should broader interventions be
considered?

5. Should the city facilitate the acquisition of space
(through zoning, tax abatements and other incentives)
or should it get involved more in direct assembly and
purchasing of land?

6. Should job-producing activities take precedence over
other functions such as residential uses in the allocation
of newly available land.

8. TAXATION:

Note: There are issues involving the impact of the structure
of economic activity on tax revenues, i.e., has the
change in economic activity in Davenport resulted in
a revenue loss? Someone has said: "The service
revolution has debilitated the City's property tax
base." The Scott Commission report shows that
if the 1970 structure were the same as the 1960 structure,
Davenport would have received more income from its
taxes, although one table shows the difference would
only have been of the order of $17 million.

Tax Policy and Economic Development: Only an extreme
exercise of local tax policy can prevent those normal
processes of birth, growth and decay. While a minor
source of irritation, tax policy might, at the same
time, be an instrument which could be used to assist
the orderly transition to a new condition.

A.Should the city shift to taxes more responsive to
economic growth? (Income and sales taxes as opposed
to business and property taxes) OR Should the city
slow the decline in manufacturing and wholesale trade
because those sectors tend to yield more tax revenues
per employee or should it increase assessment and tax
rates for the other sectors?

B. Taxation Mechanisms

1. To what extent should tax policy be viewed as an economic
development tool, i.e., should tax policy be viewed
only as revenue-generating mechanism or also as a development
tool?

2. Should the tax rate or the tax structure be modified?

3. Should tax abatement policies be firm and/or industry
specific or area specific?

4. Are other business incentives (various type of subsidies)
preferable to tax abatements?

5. Should tax policy attract new industries or favor
existing ones? Should tax policy help declining firms
and/or industries or concentrate on those with possibilities
of expansion?

6. Should revenues from taxes be used primarily to provide
services to businesses or to give various financial
incentives? Should the city push for greater uniformity
in tax burdens across the metropolitan area?

7. Should the city push for greater uniformity
in the tax burdens across the metropolitan area?

---

THE ROLE OF CITY GOVERNMENT: SOMETHING WORTH THINKING ABOUT./Priorities for Public Action.

Alan Joplin

Opportunity is the keystone, as it were, of a priority
system for public action: opportunity for personal
fulfillment, opportunity for economic satisfaction,
opportunity to live decently and safely. The foundation
on which opportunity must rest is a strong and healthy
economy. Any general threat to the city's economy,
any substantial slippage, would represent a threat
to the welfare of the city. The fact that the economy
of the city is, in general, doing well, that there
appears no imminent danger of a mass collapse, does
not mean that it can be ignored or that it does not
require the attention of government. On the contrary,
the economy requires close attention and a continuing
program of public action calculated to achieve maximum
results with minimum public expenditure.

The achievement of such results depends neither on magic
nor on wishful thinking. It depends rather on a strategy
of building economic growth around the city's strong
point--its role as the regional center. The aim will
be to deliberately make the fullest possible use of
the driving force represented by private economic initiative
by encouraging it through the provision of necessary
services and a hospitable environment, by freeing it
from unnecessary inhibitions or restrictions, by steering
it so that it doesn't do thoughtless or inadvertent
damage to its own self-interest, and by harnessing
it where feasible to achieve multiple benefits.

At the same time, the city government will have to
buttress, where it can, the weak spots in the economy--particularly
the manufacturing and goods-producing industries. Those
with growth potential, or at least some long-term strength,
should be encouraged or assisted; those in decline
should be protected from actions which hasten their
demise or make their transition more difficult. But
this effort must be selective, realistic and unsentimental.
It should not squander government resources and energy
by attempting to turn back a tide of history. In general,
the most critical and costly public efforts aimed at
economic development--although not the only ones--will
be in transportation, the provision of space for expansion,
and manpower development and training. These are the
city's top priority jobs in economic development. The
transportation jobs are to improve mass transit service
to business districts for the people who work there,
to improve internal circulation in these areas of both
people and goods, to serve the city's escalating demands,
and to give priority to those arterial highways which
will best serve the industrial areas of the city.

In a city as developed as Davenport, the provision of
adequate space to meet the needs of activities important
to the city's well-being becomes increasingly difficult
and critical. In the case of providing for the continued
expansion of office buildings, the demand is not so
much, if at all, on the city's fiscal resources as
it is on its resources of foresight, planning, and
intelligent guidance.

The city must anticipate the expansion needs of its
downtown not just for the next few years, but for
the next quarter century. It should take advantage
of private activity by providing a planning framework
that can link together individual private developments
so that the total benefit achieved will be more than
the sum of its parts. It should also use its powers
of regulation and inducement to insure that the development
of highly profitable economic resources such as office
buildings will help stimulate and revitalize, rather
than destroy important functions of the regional center.

The test of the market place can sometimes be short-sighted
and not in the best long-term economic interest of
the city. A more difficult, expensive, and in some ways a more
immediately critical problem, is to provide expansion
space for industrial activities. There are many active
and dynamic industrial firms in this city that are
seeking to expand, and that will leave the city if
they cannot find additional space here. Even though,
unlike office building users, they are sharply limited
in what they can pay by the highly competitive nature
of industry in Davenport, they include firms whose
retention is of real importance to the city's economy
and its job market.

The city needs to develop new programs to selectively assist those firms that can
provide the kind of jobs needed here, that can provide
the kinds of service that other sectors of the economy
require, or that otherwise can contribute to the city's
economic growth. It needs both to find ways to implement
an embryonic industrial park program, and to more efficiently
utilize existing industrial districts, or mixed districts
suitable for industrial expansion.

The city's most critical economic problem at present
and in the immediate future, is the mismatch between
people and jobs. Rectifying this mismatch by developing
effective job training programs is a task of the highest
priority. It is also the most immediate and direct
link--indeed a common area--between the city's economic
development and opportunity development roles. It is
more than a waste to have businesses jeopardized because
they cannot obtain the capable, skilled, and trained
help they need--whether clerical or blue-collar--at
the same time a growing segment of the population is
becoming alienated and desperate because it cannot
find decent jobs and opportunity. It is a tragedy
to which we had better address ourselves with all our
resourcefulness, ingenuity and determination before
it completely tears apart the fabric of our urban society.

Government must be concerned with opportunity for all.
But it must direct its efforts where opportunity
is lacking or is endangered. The development of opportunity
for those who lack it--mostly the city's current "
minority " poor and the elderly population--must
be top priority of city government today.
Education is the key to opportunity development, job
training being a special form of education. Job training
programs are directed to young adults and to school
drop-outs. Whether operated directly by government,
by community corporation financed by government funds,
or, hopefully a growing trend, by private businesses
on their own or under some arrangement with government,
job training programs should have some specific results.

They should lead to real and existing jobs, to jobs
with advancement opportunities and a future, and they
should preferably lead to jobs in growing sectors of
the economy. Job training is but one aspect of what
must be a massive and sustained effort to make education
work for those it is now failing. New and more effective
programs must be developed from the pre-school level
through the community and senior college levels which
meet the needs of today's minority groups.

While education, including job training, is clearly
the highest priority need in meeting the challenge
of opportunity development, there are a number of other
high priority needs. Among these is the development
of much more effective programs for the delivery of
health services. Far more than is generally recognized,
poor health handicaps the urban population and impairs
its ability to seek and take advantage of opportunities
for status improvement. Health care that is readily
and generally available, and competent, must be profitable.

Continued vigor and vigilance in enforcing anti-discrimination
laws, and in improving and broadening them remains
a high government priority in the development of opportunity.
However violently the pendulum may swing from integration
and bussing, to quality education and self-sought separation,
full opportunity can never exist where freedom of choice
does not.

Freedom of choice is also an important element in the
development of Davenport as a better place to live.
In dealing with the city's living environment, just
as in dealing with its opportunity environment, the
essential strategy of government action is to give
highest priority to the weak spots, to the places where
it is breaking down.

In the urban Community--the very name of which denotes
a feeling of suppression and being hemmed in--a new
and massive effort to upgrade both the environment
and the people it houses is required. It will mark
a new effort at instituting a coordinated program of
physical, social and economic improvements on a broad
and sustained scale. As indicated earlier, the point
of danger is not only the urban community; it is the
area in transition as well. To guard the interests
of both the old and the new population, programs will
have to be instituted that will protect and upgrade
the basically sound physical conditions and amenities
of these areas. These programs should be locally based
and combine code enforcement, physical improvement,
city-services, and social programs.

The priority Job--easier stated than accomplished--is
to stem rolling blight by upgrading living conditions
that are below minimum standard and protecting them
where they are basically satisfactory, but threatened.
Its goal is clear: to enhance, not inhibit, real freedom
of choice for all. Additionally, continuing and more
effective programs are needed to curb threats to the
general environment, particularly air and water pollution,
and to insure that the city's basic ubiquitous services-water
supply, food distribution, and waste disposal--will
continue to meet the city's needs.

Developmental Coordinator for the City

In direct response to the demands being put on it by
the critical priority needs of the city, the role of
the city government is changing. The traditional American
pragmatic approach to government has evolved in the
past in response to former needs. The real question
is whether it is changing--indeed, whether it can change--far
enough and fast enough to meet the urgent developmental
demands confronting the city in this last decade of
the twentieth century.

These major developmental problems--the development
of the economy, the creation of the kind of opportunities
needed to help a new generation of disadvantaged people
get into the mainstream of the city's life, and improving
the quality of the city's environment, both in the
neighborhoods and city-wide--are not being met at all
adequately either by the public or the private sector.
Their solution must be seen--as it is starting to--as
the prime concern of municipal government, with first
call on its attention, its energy, and on all the resources
it can bring to bear.

This means that the city government must deliberately
and self-consciously emphasize a new role for itself--that
of coordinator and manager of the city's social, economic
and physical development. It must become a full-fledged
partner in the development of the city. Even though
city programs in the past have had significant developmental
consequences, the major emphasis of city government
was not in that direction.

It was, rather, on providing society with those basic
support systems such as transportation, streets, water
supply, sewers, and general services (police, fire
fighting, education, public health) which could not
profitably or feasibly be provided by the private sector.
It was on providing personal support and remedial services
to those unable to meet their own needs, from the poorhouse
of the revolutionary period to the social service system
of today. It was on providing, or assisting in providing,
educational and cultural enrichment--great museums,
libraries, municipal colleges.

There are three forces that have shaped the evolution
of government in the city. First, there is the steady
growth in the sheer numbers of people living in the
city who required services. The second force shaping
the role of government has been the condition of people,
particularly that portion of the population which was
not able to support itself in an urban setting. In
the growth periods of the city, governmental institutions
had to play the major role in helping very large groups
of people who were not able to support themselves immediately
on coming to the city, or who were not able to operate
in a competitive economy. The great systems of health
services, welfare, and other social services, were
all a response to this pressure. The third force shaping
the role of government has been the way private investment
and enterprise has operated in the city over the course
of history.

It is difficult for government to give up a responsibility
once it has acquired it. The urgent needs of one generation
become the commonplace services of the next. The government's
involvement in parks and playgrounds, health services,
mass transportation, today is routine and grew out
of the crises of earlier periods. The government is
not in a position to abdicate responsibility for any
of these. This accretion has resulted in a large governmental
apparatus, an ongoing set of major services responsibilities,
and huge expenditures of public funds.

Now the job is to find ways to bring this power to bear
on the key developmental problems of the city. The
traditional approach and programs just do not get at
the city's real problems. Despite the expenditure
for education, children are reading below grade level.
Despite enormous expenditures for welfare and support,
there are still families below the poverty line.

Despite the construction of public and publicly-aided
apartments and the expenditure of millions, barely
a dent has been made. For every household that we
can help via traditional renewal and housing programs,
there are six who either can not meet public housing
eligibility standards or who can not afford to pay
minimal rent increases following traditional rehabilitation.
Despite rising expenditures for health care, average
life expectancy in many parts of the city is below
the national average. Infant mortality is up among
the poor. Despite new programs, neighborhoods continue
to deteriorate.

Government must use its great energies to strike at
the roots of the city's problems, rather than simply
delivering a standard set of services. Its concern
must be the total result achieved, not the number of
programs delivered. The question is not the number
of units built, the number of clinic visits, the number
of arrests, the number of garbage pick-ups.

The question is the quality of neighborhood life, the
reduction in crime and juvenile delinquency, the increase
in the safety and cleanliness of the streets, the decrease
in infant mortality.

The question is not the number of industries, the number of training Programs, the
number of training centers. It is the number of decent
jobs available to serve as an entry into the mainstream
for Davenport poor, and the number of poor equipped
to take them. The question is not how many schools
and how many teachers. It is not even the teacher-child
ratio. It is how many children enter school equipped
with the skills to learn. It is how many children are
at or above grade level in reading and arithmetic.
It is whether increasing numbers of children stay in
school instead of dropping out. And it is what percentage
of kids graduate and how many of these go on to some
form of higher education or to a job with a future.

The developmental role will put tremendous demands on
the city government. But the city government is taking
on a job, not as the sole agent, but as a partner
in development. Individuals, business, private institutions,
quasi-independent public agencies, and the state and
federal government must all continue to play a major
role in city development. The city government, however,
will have to accept prime responsibility for directing
and guiding this development in the interest of the
city's businesses and residents. It is toward the
responsibility for this obligation that the development
plan is directed.

Supply and Demand

For all practical purposes, demand--that is, the city's
developmental needs--is inexhaustible. Supply--the
resources to meet those needs--is sharply limited.
That is the basic equation we have to work with. Over
the next ten to twenty years, the traditional functions
of government in Davenport will require at least as
much of the city's executive and administrative energy,
fiscal resources, and staff as they do today.

The quality and quantity of basic services is important
to the " livability " of the city, and the
city government is going to be under considerable pressure
to deliver its traditional services at standards that
are higher than previous times. Not only will the provision
of basic services require major outlays in the future,
but also, the number of persons requiring some form
of support is going to continue to increase. While
the federal and state governments will assume a larger
part of this increased support burden, the total governmental
effort in this area will likely be much larger than
it is now.

Over the next decade, public expenditures for income
support in Davenport will exceed millions. Similarly,
the remedial programs are going to require increasing
public allocations. With increasing leisure, society
is going to demand a more developed governmental program
for cultural and educational enrichment. While government
must share this burden with private sponsors, it is
unlikely that governmental allocations for enrichment
programs will fall short over the next ten years.

Thus, the pressure for expansion of current commitments
to government's basic functions in Davenport could
very easily call for a tripling of the public's current
expenditures over the next decade. The resources now
available to the city come nowhere near meeting this
total need. They are not insubstantial, but the
government of the city of Davenport is only one level
of government that provides important services in the
city.

In addition to these services, government at all levels
is providing large amounts of direct and indirect subsidies
to spur private actions of various kinds. To support
housing and development, for example, there are federal
mortgage guarantees and low interest loan programs,
state and municipal loan programs, tax abatement, rent
supplements, land acquisition and write down programs,
and small business loans. There are a vast array
of other governmental actions to control, regulate,
promote, and in other ways influence the course of
life in the city. Each of these programs has a specific
reason for being, and in concert, they add up to a
formidable amount of power.

However, the city must still meet a significant share
of its needs from its own budget, and here the picture
is not good. Even if we simply extrapolate recent
expenditures reflecting cost increases, projected
revenues will fall far short of meeting this need.
A close look at the revenue picture confirms this
overall judgment.

The city has been taking steps towards modernizing its
tax system by finding continuing and increasing courses
of revenue, streamlining the structure for efficient
administration, and improving the equity of its taxes.
Because of its inequity as well as its effect on key
industries, the gross receipts tax was abolished and
replaced by a far more reasonable business income tax.
But an even more important step was the shift away
from prime reliance on the real property tax and introduction
of the personal income tax. Real property, traditionally
the major tax base of American cities, reflected the
wealth of the city up to around 40 years ago.

Today it is no longer the true measure of wealth in our urban
society. The decline in the relative share of national
governmental revenues raised by cities parallels the
change in the definition of wealth. In this period
of boom and expansion, which saw the development of
the large remaining areas of the city's open land,
the returns from the property tax paralleled the growth
of the economy and the expansion of city needs for
revenue. But the city has passed beyond this period
when the property tax reflected the growth of the national
and local economy. Since this wealth now rests, not
in property, but in the earnings of businesses and
individuals, the institution of a city tax on income
provides the best and most equitable way to raise city
revenues.

However, there are basic problems and limits in the
city's own revenue raising potential. Increases in
income taxes, property taxes, and other local tax
rates will be self-defeating for the city, for every
increase in taxes brings with it the normal reaction
from wealthier residents and business firms to move
outside the city. This does not help the city or its
more dependent population who must rely on the jobs
and income supplied by existing businesses to provide
their livelihood.

Because this is such a sensitive situation today, the
city cannot afford to increase the taxes that make
relocation decisions economically easier on the part
of the city's businesses and reduce the number of
jobs that are vital to keeping large portions of the
population off the public payroll. Thus, the city
appears to be faced with a serious fiscal gap, despite
substantial cost economics, predicted increases in
federal and state aid, and the expanded use of the
property tax.

A Strategy for Government Operations

It is the very magnitude of the need compared to the
limitations of resources that makes it critical for
government to develop a well - calculated strategy
for its own operations. As rich as we are as a society,
we cannot afford to waste public resources on ill
conceived or misdirected programs or on inefficient,
wasteful, or competitive operations. The imperatives
of city development require not simply that we set
a dollar's worth for every dollar spent, but that for
every public dollar expended we seek a return of two,
three, five, or ten dollars in value received. This
may at first appear a statement of glib exhortation
or pious hope. It is not.

It states a realizable objective--provided
that we use our resources where they will have a "
multiplier " effect, apply our programs where
they will exercise the maximum leverage for development,
deliberately seek programs that will do double duty,
insure that the various levels of government work
toward common goals, not at cross purposes, and harness
the developmental energy and efforts of the private
sector to achieve broader public purposes.

The key factor is the willingness and intent to evaluate
the delivery of public programs and services on the
basis of performance. To make performance the test
of method--that is, to accept what works best--is not
to do the obvious or the simple, as any public administrator
caught in the web of ideology, tradition, or administrative
and political theory can testify. But it is necessary
if we are to make the most of limited resources.
New schemes of public-private interaction, and city-regional
partnership; different mixes of centralization and
decentralization; different degrees of agency independence
and inter-agency operations; functional versus geographic
organization will be required depending on the nature
of the service and the most effective way to reach
those to be served.

The nature of the problem must fundamentally determine
the vehicle for delivery. If health services are better
delivered by private institutions with public funds,
this should be the direction. If mass transit services
are better provided on a regional basis with the city's
own system integrated into a regional set up, this
must be the direction. If education in the urban setting
is best provided through decentralized control of certain
kinds of administrative and programming decisions,
this should be accommodated. If welfare funds intended
for rent can be better used to maintain the housing
stock occupied by welfare clients, ways should be found
for this to be done.

More specifically, there are ten basic principles of
government operation that can help the city to achieve
its developmental goals:

1. Reorganization of departments and agencies of municipal
government into basic, general purpose administrations

While this reorganization of municipal government will
improve its operating efficiency, its main purpose
is to structure government so as to facilitate achievement
of its basic goals. Government functions grew by accretion.
Agencies proliferated as new demands were put on government.

They tended to have single-purposes or limited-purpose
revisions and focused their attention on the particular
services they rendered, not on the goals they were
intended to achieve. The new administrations will
be responsible for broad problem areas, for seeing
the inter-relatedness of problems, and for seeking
fundamental solutions.

2. Maximum decentralization of government operations.

Government, like the big private corporations, has now
discovered that it is necessary to decentralize to
achieve operational efficiency. In order to avoid
bottle-necks and to achieve flexibility, decision-making
should always be pushed as far down the line as possible.
A practical corollary of this axiom is that to the
extent feasible, decisions affecting a local area or
a field operation should be made in the local area
or the field, preferably by those responsible for their
implementation.

It should be understood, however, that improved decentralization depends upon improved
centralization, as paradoxical as that may appear.
The chief executive of an organization--whether the
president of GM or the Mayor of Davenport--cannot delegate
responsibility without being sure of what he/she delegates
and without retaining the central responsibilities
which are uniquely his or hers. The basic framework
of policy, the basic allocation of resources, must
be made centrally. Once secure in the basic splits,
resources and authority can be delegated, releasing
local initiative and resulting, hopefully, in swifter
and more flexible responses to local needs.

3. Coordinated neighborhood delivery

Steps must be taken to make sure that all the actions
the city takes in a particular neighborhood operate
to supplement, not conflict with, one another and are
part of a single plan and program for achieving real
improvement in the area. The planning and execution
of this program is being done with the neighborhood,
not simply for it.

4. Maximum citizen participation is essential

Government must be brought closer to the people. Many
of the complaints of people about their government
stem from its bewildering complexity, from the sense
of isolation an individual has due to not being able
to relate to a system that he neither understands nor
has the capability to deal with. Not only illiterate
newcomers, but sophisticated citizens as well, do not
know which governmental agency to approach or how to
register a complaint. The reorganization of departments
into larger units, while making the government less
complex, is not going to make the government seem more
" human." The impersonality of a huge distant
bureaucracy grinding out decisions and actions that
have little relevance to the day-to-day services they
supervise or to the people they are presumed to serve,
should be as frightening to the highest officials as
it is to the individual citizen. To counter the dangers
of a remote, faceless, and isolated central government,
the city should also embark on a broad program of citizen
involvement in the on-going processes of government.

5. More effective use of existing resources

Given the city's tight financial situation and the great
pressures on the increases the quality and quantity
of all traditional services, the city could easily
dissipate all of its energy.

6. More rational division of responsibility among
the federal, state and city government

The basis for which levels of government finance various
kinds of programs in the future must be more consciously
related to the problems, effects, and equities of
methods of raising revenues. For example, the federal
and state governments raise their revenues primarily
from the income of the residents of their jurisdictions,
while the city still raises most of its taxes from
the owners of property and businesses. Because of
this, we expect that programs (like those concerned
with providing economic opportunity, income support,
and job development) that are designed to fill the
gaps in income created by the operation of our social
and economic system, should be united using state and
federal funds which are generated out of the wealth
of the nation.

The funding by the federal government of Medicare and Medicaid is a step in this direction.
Problems that the city shares with the rest of the
region that result from the changing economy, the push
of middle-income population outward across the city's
boundaries, transportation needs, and the disposal
of wastes in the air and water can be solved only by
simultaneous and coordinated action both inside and
outside the political jurisdictions of the city. The
state, interstate and regional authorities must be
the prime focus for policy-making, funding, and coordination.

7. The federal, state and city governments will have
to develop closer relationships on basic policy and
program matters

The federal and state governments are continuously making
policy which affects a range of city problems. The
solution to many of the city's problems rests literally
in the hands of higher authorities-national policies
influencing the distribution of income, the allocation
of the nation's resources, the types of national and
state programs that are given publicity and emphasis
at any one time are major forces in determining what
happens in the city. But federal and state goals currently
defining program priorities have commitments and timetables
which often force Davenport into inappropriate patterns
of resource use.

8. Davenport must be permitted to use federal and state
funds more flexibly and purposefully to support basic
developmental programs

This is almost as important as the vast increases in
federal and state aid called for by the urban crisis.
Single purpose grants do not adequately support
the city's urgent need for much more inter-related
and flexible actions. Many urban leaders have called
for block grants to be used by city governments as
they see fit. Such open ended grants would tend to
be absorbed by the on-going service responsibilities
of local governments. We need more grants to be
aimed at a clearly specified problem of the city,
but used in any way which is appropriate.

9. Partnerships between non-profit institutions and
the city of Davenport

The city is the headquarters of many community service
organizations, medical institutions, and universities.
Over time they are increasingly using their home-town
as a laboratory for their resources and services, a
practice that can mean significant contributions to
the city's future development. This kind of involvement
and relationship is already the practice in health,
where non-profit hospitals are assuming more and more
of the burden of providing health services. The pattern
of affiliation of municipal and private hospitals is
an example of the kind of partnership that can be extended
in other areas. The city's great private universities
are beginning to move towards the use of their research
and training capabilities to aid in city development.
City government should encourage this process and
use its powers, where appropriate, to aid institutions
that are helping the city achieve its developmental
goals.

10.Private enterprise must be harnessed to help achieve
public developmental goals

In the past, the city was satisfied to use its regulatory
powers mainly to prevent what it felt undesirable.
But it has begun to appreciate that by the using of
its own regulatory powers imaginatively, in combination
with the economic threat of a private development trend,
it can create a unique source for achieving a broader
public purpose, whether the development of pedestrian
arcades and plazas, the establishment of training programs
for young people, or the building of viable communities.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: THE FIRST AMENDMENT

Alan L. Joplin

• A. Our freedom of speech, protected by the First Amendment
  in the Bill of Rights, is one of our most basic constitutional
  rights. Yet the precise nature of what is protected
  by the First Amendment is often misunderstood.

  
  

• B. The word speech in the First Amendment has been
  extended to a generous sense of "expression"
  -- verbal, non-verbal, visual, symbolic.

  
  

• C. Various exceptions to free speech have been recognized
  in American law, including obscenity, defamation, breach
  of the peace, incitement to crime, fighting words,"
  and sedition.

  
  

• D. The work of major philosophers who have considered
  freedom of expression (e.g., J.S. Mill and Joel Feinberg)
  is helpful in explaining the rationale for these exceptions.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution

This image is the joint resolution of Congress in 1789 proposing amendments to the Constitution, now known as the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution says that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging
the freedom of "speech." Close attention to these few important words reveals several issues demanding interpretation and clarification.

Note that the document uses the word "speech,"
although a long succession of court decisions has expanded
this concept far beyond ordinary verbal communication.
Protected expression now includes such non-verbal expression
as wearing a symbol on one's clothing, dance movements,
and a silent candlelight vigil.

Consider how the concept of "speech" has been
broadened and what "speech" is for these
purposes.

Must it constitute communication?

Expression?

Expression of what?

Must it use a language of some verbal or non-verbal sort to receive this protection?

What do we mean by a language?

Are there forms of expression which we would not want
protected?

Also note that the language is a prohibition on Congressional
action. The First Amendment only protects speech against
which Congress has passed a law abridging it. Suppressions
of speech are not violations of the First Amendment
unless the State does the suppressing. The State could
be either the Federal government or (now) a State government.

Many mistakenly thank that any suppression of speech,
including suppression by private citizens, violates
the First Amendment. What if a record company decides
to drop a certain recording artist from its roster
or a U.S. Senator makes a speech in which he says he
personally wishes that Hollywood would stop making
X-rated moves? Such a private action might be objectionable
for ethical or social reasons, but it does not present
a constitutional issue.

Why it is that one might still object to these private
suppressions of speech, even when the government is
not involved.

Are these ethical concerns? If so, what ethical principles
are at stake?

Should all citizens be urged on moral grounds to allow
freedom of expression by all of their fellow citizens
and not attempt to suppress that speech as private
citizens?

Would the First Amendment be improved if it prohibited
abridgement of speech by anyone, not just Congress?
Should every citizen have a right to say anything at
all with no suppression by fellow citizens? Are there
times when private citizens not only could but should
suppress the speech of their fellow citizens?

Controversies about speech protected by the First Amendment
seem to arise because the speech at issue is unpopular
or controversial or highly offensive for various reasons.
Yet a hallmark of the Bill of Rights is protection
of minority views.

If the First Amendment only protected popular speech,
supported by the majority of citizens, then the constitutional
protection would not be needed. Instead we could simply
have a referendum with the majority deciding which
speech should be allowed. In a sense, of course, Congressional
representation constitutes a majority referendum. If
the majority of citizens is presumed to speak through
Congress, and if a majority of Congress votes to ban
certain speech, then the First Amendment intervenes
to prohibit that suppression by the majority.

Should we protect the minority view?

Are there minority views we should protect, while others should be suppressed?

How should such a distinction be made?

If a statement is offensive to someone, should it be suppressed?

If it harms someone, should it be suppressed? what
do we mean by harm?

What speech is protected?

Speech includes much more than verbal oration and need
not include any words. The expression of artists, including
the use of symbolism, is protected under the First
Amendment.

The wearing of armbands with a peace symbol was protected
during the Vietnam War as symbolic speech protected
under the First Amendment.

Yet the burning of a draft card was not considered protected
speech but an illegal behavior violating the Selective
Service rules A continuing issue is the precise nature
of artistic and symbolic speech that is protected versus
behavior that is not.

How should we make such distinctions between artistic
and symbolic speech that is protected and illegal behavior that is not?

Should performance art that includes many overt, physical
behaviors be protected as symbolic speech?

What might we mean by a symbol in the context of the First Amendment?

Is that the same sense we might use when interpreting,
for example, the symbolism in a work of art?

Exceptions to Freedom of Expression

Many exceptions to the First Amendment protections have
been recognized by the courts, although not without
controversy.

Courts sometimes justify these exceptions as speech
which causes substantial harm to the public, or speech
which the Founding Fathers could not have intended
to protect, or traditions that have long been part
of the common law tradition from England that was the
basis of our American legal system.

Rather than merely reciting the list of established
exceptions, the rationale for making exceptions to
free speech protection under the Constitution.

The value of free speech sometimes clashes with other
values in our culture.

How should we weigh the relative importance of these values?

How do we balance free speech against racism, sexism,
or anti-Semitism which promotes values we despise as a country?

Against speech which some consider a symptom of the
decay of society's traditional values?

Against speech which directly results in physical injury
to another person?

Exceptions established by the courts to the First Amendment
protections include the following:

(1) Defamation: Defamation consists of a publication
of a factual statement which is false and which harms
the reputation of another person. Our right to freedom
of expression is restricted when our expressions (whether
a spoken slander or written libel) cause harm to the
reputation of another person. The courts recognize
that words can hurt us, for example, by harming our
ability to earn a living (economic harm).

This exception to freedom of expression can be difficult
to apply in practice. Defamation requires an allegation
of a fact which is in fact false. In contrast, the
expression of an opinion is not considered defamation.
Imagine an artistic exhibit claiming that certain named
persons, ordinary citizens were child molesters or
had a secret Nazi past or earned extra income as prostitutes.
If these are viewed strictly as factual claims which
are false, they would seem to constitute defamation.

But what if the artist said she was expressing a symbolic
commentary or creating a metaphor about the secret
lives of ordinary people, not making an allegation
of fact?

How should we draw the line in an artistic work between
a factual statement and a symbolic or metaphorical
opinion?

Some years ago, on an eastern college campus, flyers
were distributed with the names of male students randomly
drawn from the student directory, with the label that
they were potential rapists. Assume, for the sake of
argument, that this is guerrilla theater art.

Were these flyers statements?

Were they false statements?

Were the reputations of the male students harmed?

Should these expressions be protected by the First Amendment
if the expressions were made by artists?

Should we allow such statements, even if they are defam-atory,
if they are made by artists?

How then should we decide who counts as an artist for
this exception to the prohibition on defamation?

(2) Causing panic: The classic example of speech which
is not protected by the First Amendment, because it
causes panic, is falsely shouting "fire"
in a crowded theater. This is narrowly limited to
situations in which a reasonable person would know
that it was very likely that his or her speech would
really cause harm to others.

We can imagine works of art which might cause real panic
among the audience, perhaps a contemporary version
of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, which caused considerable
panic when it first aired on the radio.

What if a guerilla theater group staged a fake emergency
which a reasonable person would expect would almost
certainly cause real panic among the audience?

This might be a theater production during which the
director plans to yell "fire" and cause a
stampede by the audience to the exit doors.

Should this exercise of freedom of expression by artists
be protected by the First Amendment?

Could we argue that the panic resulted simply because
naive audience members were unsophisticated about how
to approach art and that freedom of expression should
prevail?

Perhaps (on might argue) they do not know how to assume
an "aesthetic attitude" or appropriately
"distance" themselves from a work of art.

(3) Fighting words: The U.S. Supreme Court held that
the First Amendment does not protect "fighting
words -- those which by their very utterance inflict
injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the
peace." This famous exception is much discussed
in recent decades, but rarely the basis for a decision
upholding an abridgement of free speech.

This exception warrants scrutiny. Note that the harm
involved is physical harm caused by someone else who
was provoked by the speaker whose speech is being suppressed.
The fact that someone else flies into a rage and causes
physical harm results in justifying suppression of
speech by another person! It is worth considering why
this exception has declined in acceptance.

Are we now more skeptical of claims that people cannot
control their actions?

Do we demand the exercise of more responsibility by
persons regardless of wha inflammatory words they might
hear?

Are we more suspicious of claims of causal necessity
in such situations?

Note the irony that we are also witnessing an increase
in the so-called "abuse excuse" in which
we seem more likely to excuse someone's behavior because
of something someone else did to them. Is this inconsistent
with the decline in the fighting words exception?

(4) Incitement to crime: It is a crime to incite someone
else to commit a crime, and such speech is not protected
by the First Amendment.

If a budding rap group proposes to perform a work which
includes the exhortation to "kill whitie"
or "kill the cops" or "rape the babe,"
could that be incitement to a crime?

Such records have been sold by commercial organizations,
of course, yet there are no reported arrests of those
artists or record companies for incitement to a crime?

Should such rap lyrics be considered incitement to crime
or is the causal relationship to any actual murders
or rapes to tenuous?

A novel criminal defense has arisen, claiming that such
music somehow

compelled the defendant to commit the crime. In Austin,
Texas, Ronald Ray Howard, charged with the capital
murder of a state trooper, claimed in his defense that
". . . he learned to hate police officers from
years of listening to rap music with violent anti-police
themes. . . . "

Is this an acceptable defense?

Why or why not? (The jury convicted him, reaching a
verdict in 35 minutes.)

The recent attention to violence on television is largely
a debate overwhether such televised violence is a cause
of actual violence, such that persons who exhibit violent
shows should be held responsible. If society wants
to discourage violence on television, is it because
such depicted violence is clearly a cause of actual
violence? Are there other reasons why society might
still feel justified in restricting this depiction?

It is easy to imagine highly unpalatable projects which
arguably could be considered an incitement to crime.
What if a fundamentalist religious extremist group
publishes a guidebook in this country on how to commit
terrorism in the United States, with detailed instructions
on making bombs, maps showing the homes and offices
of government officials, and so forth. Instructions
alone would not seem to constitute incitement, so assume
that the book will also include a statement from the
religion's most revered leader urging that the guaranteed
path to eternal bliss is following the instructions
in the book.

Given the presumed audience, might this be incitement
to crime?

In considering these issues, students should come to
understand thecomplexities of what it means to incite
or cause a crime and the factors which lead us to hold
some people responsible but not others. Students should
also learn that the values society promotes include
educational and moral values, as well as legal protections.

(5) Sedition: Although not without controversy, the
U.S. Supreme Court has upheld statutes which prohibit
the advocacy of unlawful conduct against the government
or the violent overthrow of the government. As with
prohibitions discussed earlier, the expressions in
question are assessed according to the circumstances.
Academic discussion of the theories of, say, Karl Marx
presumably would not be prohibited under such a test,
especially in this post-Soviet era.

The theoretical consideration and even endorsement of
these views could not remotely be considered to be
reasonable expectations of the actual overthrow of
the government. But it is possible that an artist might
develop a project, perhaps guerrilla theater or an
exhibit, that urged the destruction of the United States
(the "Great Satan") by extremist religious
groups. The likelihood of success by the latter group
would seem as improbable as the likelihood of success
by contemporary Marxists.

If the discussion of Marx should not be prohibited as
sedition, should we be consistent and allow discussion
by the religious extremist?

Are there any grounds upon which we could distinguish
these situations?

(6) Obscenity: The Supreme Court established a three-pronged
test for obscenity prohibitions which would not violate the First Amendment:

(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary
community standards, would find that the work, taken
as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest.

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently
offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined
by the applicable state law.

(c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious
literary,

artistic, political or scientific value.

Although much debated, this standard remains the law
of the land, and elements of this language have been
included in both the authorizing legislation for the
National Endowment for the Arts and the new Communications
Decency Act prohibiting "obscenity" and "indecency"
on the Internet.

One controversy over this provision is whether obscenity
causes real harm sufficient to justify suppression
of free speech.

Does viewing obscenity make it more likely that a man
will later commit rape, or other acts of violence against
women, obviously real harm to another person?

Does reading about war make it more likely that someone
will start a war?

Even if there is some evidence of such causal relationships,
however tenuous or strong, is it sufficient to justify
this exception to free speech?

Alternatively, could the prohibition on obscenity be
a reflection of moral values and societal standards
which should more properly be handled in the private
sector through moral education, not government censorship?

Another problem area is determining what counts as "obscenity".
The court tried to fashion a standard which could be
adapted to different communities, so that what counts
as obscenity in rural Mississippi might not count as
obscenity in Atlanta or New York City.

Is this fair?

Do the people in those areas themselves agree on community
standards?

What is the "community" for art that is displayed
on-line on the Internet?

Another fruitful area for exploration is the exception
for "serious literary, artistic, political or
scientific value."

Who decides what counts as "serious"?

If some people consider Penthouse or the National Enquirer
to be serious literature, is it elitist to deny them
this exception from censorship as "obscenity"?

Given the controversies in contemporary art (found
objects, performance art, and so forth), what counts
as artistic value?

Has the Court solved the problem of defining "obscenity"

or only made it more complicated?

In reviewing these classic exceptions to free speech,
it does seem that real harm can be caused by at least
some of these instances of speech. Following J.S. Mill,
we could limit our restrictions to real harm -- physical
or economic harm, not psychic or hypothetical harm.
If real harm is present, then we should next address
the causal relationship necessary to hold someone responsible
for the harm caused by the expression. This is not
easy, of course, but we do have models for determining
when a causal relationship is sufficiently close ("proximate")
to hold someone responsible. We also have experience
in determining whether to hold people responsible based
on whether a reasonable person knew or should have
known the consequences of their actions.

In addition to these established exceptions to freedom
of expression, there are examples of speech which would
not cause real harm, in Mill's sense, but which some
believe justify suppression of speech.

(7) Offense: Although rejected by American courts, some
theorists argue that speech which is merely offensive
to others should be another exception to the First
Amendment. In a court challenge to an National Endowment
for the Arts (NEA) funded exhibit, David Wojnarowicz:
Tongues of Flame, David Fordyce and Yvonne Knickerbocke
claimed that the exhibit caused them to "[suffer]
a spiritual injury and that the exhibition caused offense
to their religious sensibilities." The court rejected
the claim, especially as "plaintiffs do not even
allege that they have either seen the exhibition or
studied the catalogue . . . [and thus] have failed
to show that they have endured any special burdens
that justify their standing to sue as citizens."
Id. But the court left open the possibility that the
plaintiffs might have a claim if "they had to
confront the exhibition daily, . . . the exhibition
was visible in the course of their normal routine,
or . . . their usual driving or walking routes took
them through or past the exhibition." But the
complexities of this issue are highlighted when other
examples are considered.

What if an exhibit celebrated the practice of some religions
of female genitalia mutilation?

Should such exhibits be accorded the full protection
of the First Amendment despite the horror which most
feel about such "religious" practices?

Are there some expressions which are so extremely offensive
to many in the population that they should be banned
by the government, even though they cause no real harm
to anyway?

By what criteria should this be decided?

(8) Establishment of Religion: Some speech is restricted
because it constitutes the establishment of religion,
which is itself prohibited by the First Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution. ("Congress shall make
no law respecting an establishment of religion.")
Prayer led by a principal in a public school would
violate the establishment clause. Thus, a school policy
prohibiting the principal from leading such prayers
would not violate the right of free speech. This is
controversial to some, who believe that banning prayer
in the public schools limits an equally important right,
freedom of religion. This tension illustrates the not-uncommon
challenge of balancing competing and perhaps even irreconcilable
values in the Constitution.

In challenging the Wojnarowicz exhibit, plaintiffs argued
that the exhibit was critical of their Christian beliefs
and thus violated the establishment clause. The plaintiffs
said that they view the public display of the exhibition
as an affront to their liberty to practice religion
free from governmental entanglement and politically
divisive governmental intrusion into the affairs of
religion.

But the court said "that merely asserting spiritual
injury under the establishment clause is insufficient
to support standing to sue as citizen." Of interest
here is distinguishing between spiritual injury, physical
injury or harm, and economic harm.

Why are the latter two sufficient to suppress speech,
but not the former?

What criteria seem to be involved in making such a distinction?

A future plaintiff might be able to show sufficient
and direct suffering, but another consideration would
rule out such challenges to NEA grants.

To violate the Establishment clause, "Congress
. . . [must have decided] how the . . . funds were
to be spent, and the executive branch, in administering
the statute, was merely carrying out Congress' scheme."
At NEA, in contrast, Congress does not "[participate]
in the decision to grant or deny applications for federal
funding, . . . . [nor does] NEA merely [administer]
a congressional directive." This means that if
NEA denied a grant based on possible violation of the
Establishment Clause, it might violate the free speech
clause of the First Amendment. Note that this reasoning
seems to leave open the possibility of a grant by NEA
to promote appreciation for Creationism.

Philosophical Consideration of Freedom of Expression

The English philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
articulated what might be called the "liberal"
or (better) the "libertarian" position on
freedom of expression in his 1859 book On Liberty.
His test for appropriate government interference with
human liberties is his well-known "harm"
principle.



. . . the only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any member of a civilized community,
against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His
own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient
warrant. Mill

This basic principle provides an excellent rule-of-thumb
for approaching issues of freedom of expression. Most
of the classic exceptions to freedom of expression,
as established by the U.S. Supreme Court, are consistent
with this harm principle. The major exception is the
legal prohibition on obscenity, to which Mill would
object on the grounds that it does not cause real harm.

Mill appeals to several principles in defending his
position on freedom of expression.

First, how would we know which opinions to suppress
as untrue? We are not, after all, infallible.

Second, many opinions include at least some truth. Only
through vigorous debate of conflicting opinions does
the truth eventually come out.

Third, even if the opinions selected by the government
as true were indeed true, people would not necessarily
believe it, but would consider it prejudice.

Fourth, the government-approved opinions would not be
understood and appreciated by the public, as the views
would not have been developed "from reason or
personal experience."

Critics of Mill's approach to freedom of expression
generally accept the harm principle as a justification
for suppressing speech, but claim that additional reasons
are sufficient to suppress speech. Patrick Devlin and
Edmund Pincoffs, for example, believe that the government
should enforce morality and thus should legislate morality,
suppressing speech to further that goal. Others criticize
Mill's assumption that a successful democracy depends
upon freedom of expression for a healthy debate about
the issues.

Discussion questions

A popular public art project in recent years has been
the placement of poetry posters on public transportation
for people to read while commuting. Imagine a project
to place these posters in busses and subways with the
content of the Wojnarowicz exhibit that presumably
would be offensive to some religious sensibilities.
What arguments would support exhibition of the posters
on the bus? Should a government agency provide funding
for the poster? Why or why not?

If a consumer reporter said falsely that a restaurant
served her food with cockroaches in it, the restaurant
could maintain a lawsuit for defamation. if a food
critic wrote a review that, in the opinion of the critic,
the restaurant's food tasted dreadful, the restaurant
could not maintain a law suit for defamation. Yet,
if the critic is a respected food critic in the city,
that opinion could cause as much (if not more) economic
harm to the restaurant than the erroneous news report
of the consumer reporter. Does the distinction between
"falsehood" and "opinion" result
in fair results for the restaurant? Is the rationale
for allowing defamation lawsuits as a restriction on
speech justifiable?