WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

Gary L. Wamsley
economic depression, poor soil, bad erosion, years of drought, and a tornado
in 1949 that destroyed almost everything they had (before there was anything
like FEMA) meant they lived hard lives, in circumstances that today might be
considered poverty or close to it. I am not saying public administrators could
have rectified their situation then, any more than they necessarily could today.
I am simply saying that all public administrators and those who teach public
administration should understand and remember that even people who do
everything possible for themselves, their children, and their grandchildren can
be stricken by circumstances and events beyond their capacity to manage. When
these people become clients in government agencies, they are not necessarily
there because they have been imprudent, lazy, or careless.
Since they could fall back on the farm, my grandparents never had to
ask for public assistance. My father, on the other hand, was forced to turn to
the government for help, albeit briefly, when he applied for unemployment
insurance. It embarrassed him terribly. I can only hope the public administrator
who handled his case treated him with dignity.
Because of our life experiences, we professors all carry to the classroom
deeply embedded beliefs, values, and even prejudices. (After watching rich
people in their fancy clothes at the country club adjoining our farm, I could
never bring myself to become a member, even when I could finally afford it.
Nor did I take up golf.) Therefore I urge academicians and practitioners alike to
seriously consider Kenneth Oldfield’s ideas, take stock of where we have been
on matters of class, where we are trending, and where we as a field of study and
practice might better go. Perhaps each of us can help in this endeavor not only
by considering affirmative action aimed at socioeconomic diversity but also by
getting in better touch with our own roots—moving forward by looking back.
As my grandfather (who in retrospect was far wiser than I often thought) once
said, “If you don’t know where you came from, then you aren’t likely to know
where you are, and you sure as hell won’t know where you are going.”
FOOTNOTES
1 To follow this disputatio, see Oldfield (2010; 2011a, b).
2 Oldfield mentioned to me that the nation’s use of public sector force to suppress the American
labor movement never raised much ire in conservative circles as evincing the evils of “government
intervention” or “social engineering” (also see Oldfield, 2003, pp. 456–457).
3 Norton and Ariely qualify their methodology by saying they “used Sweden’s income rather than
wealth distribution because it provided a clearer contrast to the other two wealth distribution
examples; although more equal than the United States’ wealth distribution, Sweden’s wealth
distribution is still extremely top heavy.”
104 Journal of Public Affairs Education