Minority Public Administration: The Herbert Thesis and America's Promise

We would like to thank the editors of PAR for this opportunity to respond to Professor Thomas Martinez' (this issue) critique of out article, "Minority Public Administrators: The Herbert Thesis Revisited" (September/October, 1994). We would also like to thank Professor Martinez for his contribution to the crucial dialogue on minorities and Public Administration. While we do not share Professor Martinez's assessment of our work, we do believe that public discussions of this nature are necessary. These discussions are most useful when governed by the rules and traditions of scholarly engagement. In this rejoinder, we meet Professor Martinez's criticism head-on. We argue that Professor Martinez unfortunately misinterprets the thrust of our arguments and findings. We also argue that Martinez's caustic critique is, to a large extent, apparently guided by an unwavering commitment and perception of the "one best way" to conduct scholarly research on the role demands of minority public administrators. Martinez's critique is essentially another rendition of the arguments and research strategy outlined in his article on Hispanic Public Administrators. (1) We begin by citing several examples in which Professor Martinez misinterprets the intent of our work. We then turn attention to what Professor Martinez describes as the "most critical area" (p. 363), that is, our research methodology and reporting of findings. Professor Martinez apparently perceives a "one best way" to conduct scholarly research on the role demands and dilemmas of minority public administrators. This perception obscures his vision. Consequently, he seems to have difficulty seeing or appreciating the value of other scholarly works that do not embrace his so-called "rigorous" role-analysis methodology (Martinez 1991, P. 34). We then conclude with a brief discussion of the larger issue that prompted Herbert to organize the 1974 PAR symposium on "Minorities in Public Administration. " Guided by this discussion, an argument is presented that America's rapidly deteriorating race relations threaten to undermine the gains made by minority public administrators. A Question of Interpretation Martinez begins by taking us to task on what he perccives as the stated purpose of our study. He accuses us of "misleading" PAR readers because "Herbert offers a theoretical discussion not a 'test'" (p. 363) According to Martinez, "only its [Herbert's descriptive theory] 'applicability' not 'change,' can be tested" (p. 363). To establish context for this argument, Martinez offers an excerpt from our article. He informs the reader that our stated purpose is to empirically examine:" [quoting now from our article] "Whether Herbert's theory was still applicable given the myriad of technological, political and social changes that have occurred in the United States over the past 20 years. More specifically, we are interested in how minority public administrators view their role in relation to the demands and dilemmas described by Herbert. In other words, have the perceptions of minority public administrators changed over the past twenty years or have they remained the same? " (p. 363) We are perplexed by Professor Martinez's remarks for several reasons. First, we are not sure we understand his point. Is it not stated in the paragraph cited above that we were interested in whether Herbert's theory was still "applicable"? With respect to our use of the word "change," Martinez is technically correct when the term is used in a narrow sense. But, as legal and literary scholars have argued (see for example, Dworkin, 1982; White, 1982; Sarat, 1987) words have remaining by virtue of their context. We believe that the word change is appropriately used when viewed within the context of Herbert's descriptive theory. As indicated in our article (pp. 410-41 1), Herbert described the role demands and dilemmas of minority public administrators as he perceived them in 1974. …