WHAT WENT WRONG WITH DOING GOOD? 
                           by C. Edwin Vaughan 


C. Edwin Vaughan, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Sociology 
at the University of Missouri in Columbia. As a sociologist and member 
of the National Federation of the Blind, he has thought much about 
the role of consumer organizations in the field of social service 
and welfare programs. Something clearly has gone wrong between the 
high-minded intentions of those who sought to do good and the establishment
of the programs and services they created. Here is Ed Vaughan's brief 
analysis:  
 
Many of us have observed defensive, caustic, and even angry behavior 
displayed by some professionals and some agency personnel when confronted 
with consumer criticism or demands for increased consumer participation. 
Critics are frequently dismissed as misguided and certainly ungrateful 
for the contributions rehabilitation efforts have made in the lives 
of blind people. With so many professional organizations of workers 
for the blind, special programs informed by scientific research, and 
continual support from government and the public, how could anyone 
question the beneficence of these efforts? Isn't doing good always 
desirable? How can beneficence be mischievous or even harmful?  
David Rothman, a social historian at Columbia University, analyzes 
social programs that developed in the Progressive era in this country. 
Beginning around 1900, public energy and public money were organized 
to deal with a wide array of social problems. "In the history 
of American attitudes and practices toward the dependent, no group 
more energetically or consistently attempted to translate the biological 
model of the caring parent into a program for social action than the 
Progressives" (Rothman, 1978, p. 69). We will utilize his idea 
of benevolence as disguised power and draw examples from his analysis 
of several welfare programs to clarify the reason why many consumers 
resist efforts by those who would do them good.  

In the first two decades of this century, the needs of the poor and 
dependent were widely noted. As Rothman observes, the state as parent 
had much to accomplish. Everyone would benefit. There was a presumed 
unity of interests between the state and the several different types 
of needy citizens.  

Agents of the welfare state were so committed to a paternalistic model 
that they never concerned themselves with the potential of their programs 
to be as coercive as they were liberating. "In their eagerness 
to play parent to the child, they did not pause to ask whether the 
dependent had to be protected against their own well-meaning interventions.
It was as if the benevolence of their motives, together with their 
clear recognition of the wretchedness of lower-class social conditions, 
guaranteed that ameliorative efforts would unambiguously benefit the 
poor" (ibid., p. 72).  

As Rothman notes, there was consensus around the values of scholars 
and reformers alike. Schools, settlement houses, and a wide array 
of social programs would bring the poor and immigrants into the mainstream 
of middle-class American life. Between 1900 and 1920 many of our
contemporary social welfare programs had their origins, including child
support, juvenile courts, and of course new and expanded programs to
benefit blind people. The American Association of Workers for the Blind
(AAWB) was organized in 1905 with a broad agenda which included employment,
the welfare of elderly blind persons, boarding homes and other housing 
arrangements for blind adults, nurseries for blind babies, home teaching 
services for adults, and industrial education. The AAWB and the American 
Association of Instructors of the Blind (AAIB) grew, both in size 
and mutual concerns, and by 1921 jointly created the American Foundation 
for the Blind (AFB) as a new national resource for advancing their 
programs.  

What went wrong with the well-intentioned efforts of reformers to 
improve the lot of the poor, the widowed, the delinquent, the untutored 
immigrant, and the disabled? Since the aim of the state was to help 
the disadvantaged, there seemed no need to limit the power utilized 
for doing good.  

In each instance, therefore, enabling legislation and agency practice 
enhanced the prerogatives of state officials and reduced--and 
almost eliminated--legal protections and rights for those coming 
under their authority. To call the acts "widow pensions" was 
really a misnomer. The widows did not receive their allowance as a 
matter of right, the way a pensioner received his. Rather, the widow 
had to apply for her stipend, demonstrate her qualifications, her 
economic need, and her moral worth, and then trust to the decision 
of the welfare board. At their pleasure, and by their reckoning, she 
then obtained or did not obtain help. By the same token the juvenile 
court proceedings gave no standing to the whole panoply of rights 
that offenders typically enjoyed--from a trial by jury, to assistance 
from counsel, to protections against self-incrimination. There was 
nothing atypical about the juvenile court judge who openly admitted 
that in his Minnesota courtroom "the laws of evidence are sometimes 
forgotten or overlooked."  So, too, probation officers were not 
bound by any of the restrictions that might fetter the work of police 
officers. They did not need a search warrant to enter a probationer's 
home, for as another juvenile court judge explained: "With the 
great right arm and force of the law, the probation officer can go 
into the home and demand to know the cause of the dependency or the 
delinquency of a child. He becomes practically a member of the family 
and teaches them lessons of cleanliness and decency, of truth and 
integrity."  So caught up were reformers with this image of officer 
as family member that they gave no heed to the coercive character 
of their programs. To the contrary, they frankly declared that "threats 
may be necessary in some instances to enforce the learning of the 
lessons that he teaches, but whether by threats or cajolery, by appealing 
to their fear of the law or by rousing the ambition that lies latent 
in each human soul, he teaches the lesson and transforms the entire 
family into individuals which the state need never again hesitate 
to own as citizens."  With the state eager and able to accomplish 
so beneficent a goal, there appeared no reason to restrict its actions. 
The prevalence of such judgments among Progressives practically blinded 
them to the realities that followed on the enactment of their proposals. 
Not only did they fail to see the many inadequacies that quickly emerged 
in day-to-day operations; worse yet, they could not begin to understand 
that the programs might be administered in the best interests of officials,
not clients (ibid., pp. 78-79).  

One might say about many administrators of these programs that whatever 
else they did, they looked after the interests of their agencies and 
careers. Commenting on the history of original missionary families 
in Hawaii, wags have observed that they came to do good and stayed 
to do well. We now observe widespread cynicism about the claims of 
self-appointed caregivers. Do-gooders are suspect. To quote Rothman 
again, "Whereas once historians and policy analysts were prone 
to label some movements reforms, thereby assuming their humanitarian 
aspects, they [the scholars] are presently far more comfortable with 
a designation of social control, thereby assuming their coercive quality." 
 
Power and social control operate, in part, through organizational 
procedures and administrative discretion. We live in an age of regulations.
Countless agency conferences are held to "interpret the regs." 
Administrators and their subordinates control resources and apply 
rules. Clients, patients, or students have few alternatives. Power 
relationships are one-sided. Even our government has recognized this 
condition by funding protection and advocacy programs to give independent 
legal assistance and other support to individuals challenging their 
treatment at the hands of the rehabilitation system. Fair hearing 
officers are now used to hear client appeals in several states. We 
have an acute distrust of discretionary authority.  

With the civil rights movement of the 1960s Rothman describes a trend 
evidenced in several different branches of the welfare rights movement. 
"The perspective is not the perspective of common welfare but 
the needs of the particular group. The intellectual premises are not 
unity but conflict. It is `us' versus `them'" (p. 90). Control 
and benevolent oversight have been self-consciously rejected and replaced 
with concerns about autonomy and civil rights. Do not deprive us of 
competitive employment; equal pay for equal work; opportunities for 
economic mobility because we are women, black, needing some medical 
intervention, poor, or blind. From the perspective of this liberty 
and human rights concern, rehabilitation or other programs that block 
freedom of choice must be removed and are, indeed, not solutions but 
parts of the problem.  

Expanding the liberty perspective, as Rothman notes, will not solve 
all of the problems of various minority interest groups. Legitimate 
needs remain. Appropriate education and opportunities for competitive 
employment are still essential elements of equal opportunity for blind 
people. Our concern, obviously, is not to promote neglect or to legitimate 
cruelty and suffering in the name of rights. How can we access
opportunities and utilize the resources of publicly funded programs and yet
avoid domineering, demeaning, dependency-creating relationships with agents
of rehabilitation? How can the power imbalance be redressed? How can 
we avoid throwing away the baby with the bath water? How can we limit 
discretionary and arbitrary authority associated with publicly supported 
programs?  


"To this end, advocates of the liberty model are far more comfortable 
with an adversarial approach, an open admission of conflict of interest, 
than with an equality model with its presumption of harmony of interests" 
(p. 92). Would this human rights, liberty model be compatible with 
service and educational arrangements provided by experts, professionals, 
and public officials?  Whenever publicly supported programs are needed, the
recipients of benevolence must have a determinative voice in policy making
and evaluation. 

If you will do good to me, it will have to be on my terms--or we 
must at least achieve agreement and mutual respect. Equitable service 
delivery requires full consumer participation. Such participation 
will not come from agency-selected individuals or self-appointed guardians 
of blind people, but from broadly-based, democratically elected
representatives of organizations of blind people. By now you know the last
sentence: That is why we have formed the National Federation of the Blind. 

 
References: 
Rothman, David  
"The State as Parent," Doing Good, by 
Willard Gaylin, et al. Pantheon Books, 
New York, NY, 1978.