The Labor Extension Program honors the following prize winners for their essays in this issue:

 

RESEARCH CATEGORY

First Prize: Varun Palnati, UMass Lowell

Second Prize: Elijah Pontes, UMass Dartmouth

Third Prize: Joy O’Halloran, UMass Boston

 

ACTIVIST REFLECTION CATEGORY

First Prize: Katherine McCormick, UMass Boston

 

CREATIVE CATEGORY

First Prize: Folasade Imani Smith, UMass Dartmouth

UMass Amherst

UMass Amherst offers a unique multi-disciplinary program leading toward an MS degree in labor studies. We offer a two-year residential master’s program as well as a limited-residency format for trade union officers, staff, and activists. Scholarships are available. To learn more about our program, please visit our website at: www.umass.edu/lrrc.

 

UMass Boston

The Labor Resource Center at UMass-Boston is home to two undergraduate academic programs: the major (BA) and minor in Labor Studies, and the Labor Studies Certificate. These interdisciplinary programs examine the diversity of work and working-class experience, the changing nature of the workplace, and the past, present, and future of labor organizations, movements, and conflicts. The major and the minor require students to take a set of labor studies courses, but they also allow students to fill out their requirements with related courses in various College of Liberal Arts departments. The Professional Certificate in Labor Leadership is a valuable credential for emerging leaders in the labor movement. Students may enroll in the certificate program as either a pre-baccalaureate or post-baccalaureate option. For more details about our classes or our programs, visit our website: umb.edu/lrc.

 

UMass Dartmouth

At UMass Dartmouth, we are reaching deeper to work with students through creating credit internships and offering career opportunities for students in the labor movement. We are also continuing to participate in classes as guest speakers and we are now working to create service learning projects connecting students to organized labor and low-income workers. For more information, visit www.umassd.edu/labored/workwithstudents. To participate, call Camilo Viveiros, at 508-910-7108.

 

UMass Lowell

UMass Lowell offers an interdisciplinary minor in Labor Studies. The core course of the Labor Studies Minor, Introduction to Labor Studies, is offered each spring semester. It features a service learning model in which students partner with local labor and community organizations. In 2019, we will launch the Labor Education internships, with students placed with the Labor Education Program for paid or for-credit internships. Learn more at www.uml.edu/fahss/labor-studies.

The idyllic image of college students whose sole duty is attending classes, sitting on the quad, going to parties, and cramming for exams has always been more myth than reality. In 2018, however, it has become increasingly difficult to defend a vision of the college student existing in a temporary space outside the confines of the labor market, a kind of holding zone before they embark upon careers and enter the workforce. We know that for today’s college student in particular, going to class is just one part of a busy life that includes one or often more part time jobs; caretaking duties for children, siblings, parents, and other family members; unpaid internships; and work-study. Our students are not now, nor have they ever been, in a category outside the workforce. As such, their voices are incredibly important but often overlooked in the academic field of Labor Studies and in the labor movement.

While many of us have grown accustomed to reading news reports about the stagnation of unions, recent news has shown a few glimmers of hope. In recent years, support for unions among young people has skyrocketed. A 2018 Pew poll found that people under 30 have a 68% favorable view of labor unions; Gallup puts the number closer to a stunning 76%. The recent poll numbers are cause for celebration, and there’s strong reason to believe that young people today have very different ideas about what unions and a strong labor movement should look like. With only about 10% of today’s workforce in a traditional union structure, recent organizing efforts have shifted to include various models of workers’ centers and cooperatives, electoral politics (especially the “blue wave” pushing to shift the Democratic Party to the left and the skyrocketing chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America and their Young DSA counterparts), and ballot initiatives for higher pay and paid leave.

This year has spurned serious challenges, both for the labor movement as a whole and for the UMass system. In June, the Supreme Court ruled as expected in favor of Mark Janus in the Janus v. AFSCME case. Janus, a Chicago social worker backed by anti-union organizations, argued that paying dues to his union was an infringement upon his First Amendment free speech rights – but that he should still receive the benefits of a union contract. More locally, the UMass Boston, in seeking to reduce a $30 million structural budget defcit to $5 million, has cut classes, eliminated programs and laid off employees, reducing access to and resources for the largely working-class population of students of color who make up the majority of the students at that campus. Both of these challenges have spurred an outpouring of student and labor activism on our campuses and in our communities.

In creating the Undergraduate Journal on Work, Labor and Social Movements, the Labor Extension Program of the University of Massachusetts system hopes to foster a cross-campus conversation among undergraduate students at each UMass campus. This is a space for students to research trends in labor from historical, economic, and sociological perspectives; to explore the roles that labor and the labor movement play in their own lives and those of their peers; and to reflect on their own activism.

For this inaugural issue, the editors chose three categories for submissions: research, creative work, and activist reflections. The finalists we selected for publication examine questions of education, training, theory, and worker justice from a variety of lenses emphasizing the predominance of intersectionality in the way our students are thinking about labor and activism. As we have seen in the Dreamers movement, the #MeToo movement, March for Our Lives, and the Movement for Black Lives, many of today’s most successful youth organizers do not see economic justice as separate from racial justice, gender and sexuality justice, immigrant justice, and environmental justice.

Not surprisingly, several of our submissions analyzed the topic of public education from a variety of perspectives. Joy O’Halloran’s “Contradictions of Priority: Unpacking Charles Murray’s ‘Are Too Many People Going to College?’” tackles the argument by the controversial author of The Bell Curve that higher education has become too accessible in the United States. O’Halloran criticizes Murray’s determinist model of student achievement and vigorously defends the liberal arts model of critical thinking. Elijah Pontes’s “Separate and Unequal” questions the assumption that segregation, particularly in the public education system, ended with the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court in 1954. Pontes’ insightful reading tracks the ways in which state-monitored supervision of desegregation broke down relatively quickly after it began, as well as the ways in which unequal tax allocations perpetuate basic economic inequalities, exacerbated by unequal access to quality education. While not focused directly on public education, Varun Palnati’s essay “A Look at the Skill-Biased Technological Change Paradigm and Why it Fails to Adequately Explain Labor Market Shifts” looks at the question of workforce training models, particularly when it comes to technological shifts that change the way we think about what work is and how it is performed. Palnati argues that technology has caused the middle to drop out of the labor market, pushing jobs either towards highly-skilled workers or unskilled workers. The notion that technology will allow more workers to earn higher wages is fawed, he says, particularly when combined with the rising trend of shorter-term jobs that disincentivize quality employee training.

The other essays chosen for publication here demonstrate a wide variety of skillful, creative, and playful thinking about work and activism. In “The Proletariat Spectre,” Jesse Johnson updates the famous line from Marx for an audience reared on The Walking Dead and imagines class conflict as an all-out war of zombies v. vampires. Marx’s spectre, they argue, is a more apt metaphor for granting agency to the working classes, a haunting that shows its presence in every labor uprising that weakens the power of the ruling classes. Folasade Imani Smith’s creative nonfiction piece, “Sweet Pea,” gives readers a moving and compelling portrait of the hectic life of a young activist coming to terms with her ethnicity and sexuality. She marches across campus with Black Lives Matter activists, goes home to be a dutiful daughter, and balances the diffculties of living her truth in every segment of her life. Last but not least, Katherine McCormick’s “SEIU Summer: A Photo Diary” documents her internship with the Service Employees International Union, where she had the opportunity to learn about strikes and organizing on her feet. McCormick shares images from her participation in the Philadelphia airport workers’ campaign as well as in the coalition working to pass the Safe Communities Act in Massachusetts to protect immigrants and refugees in our state.

All of this wonderful work from our students demonstrates a new hope for the future of the labor movement, but it shows something else too: this generation is reshaping the way all of us think about work, workers, and economic justice. This first issue of the Undergraduate Journal on Work, Labor and Social Movements sends the resounding message that the new labor movement is intersectional, and it sees the worker as a whole person whose ethnic, cultural, gender, and sexual orientation identities all shape their experiences at work.

Our sincere thanks to University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan for his generous support of labor education and extension through the Future of Work funds.

Varun Palnati is an Economics major and Labor Studies Minor at UMass Lowell. He is very interested in labor economics, the effects of automation, and econometrics, and hopes to pursue a graduate degree, preferably a PhD. He teaches chess in his spare time. 

 

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**First Place Award for Research**

 

Abstract: The main topic this paper addresses is the paradigm of Skill-Biased Technological Change (SBTC), which describes a labor market theory concerning low and high skilled workers’ situations in the job market after new technology is introduced into the market, and how the theory holds up in the real world. This is important because automation and the effects of it are a topic that has many people concerned about the impact it could have on their jobs. By looking at how the job market for high-skilled workers has evolved over time, I hope to draw solid conclusions about how automation affects highly skilled workers, and whether the effect corresponds to the SBTC paradigm, which states that highly skilled workers should see benefits from automation. The sources I used to examine this paradigm were a paper by Autor et al. describing the SBTC model and what the expected results should be, and two papers by Lazonick et al. and Schmitt et al. which describe the ways that highly skilled workers have been affected by the introduction of new technology into the marketplace. Overall, by looking at the results of the two papers that detail how the labor market has affected highly skilled workers, a conclusion can be drawn that the SBTC paradigm does not seem to be improving the lives of high skilled workers and that they are seeing little to no benefit from automation. These results are both contrary to previous introductions of new technology into the marketplace and to mainstream economic theory, which states that highly skilled workers usually benefit from the introduction of new technology since they are generally complements to that technology, unlike low skilled workers, who tend to be substitutes.

 

Recently, many people have been concerned that automation will take their jobs, or will make their current jobs obsolete. Also, the disappearance of the middle-class and other forms of job loss have caused the center of the job market to drop out, leaving a void in the job market. Many people believe that technological shifts, such as the computer and digital technology, which is a form of automation, have been responsible for this change in the jobs available for people. Many economists have been analyzing this idea, and they have come up with a catchall term to explain this, called skill-biased technological change (SBTC). This idea, which states that shifts in technology increase the production capacity of higher skilled workers more and therefore the job market demands more of them, seems reasonable in theory, but upon closer analysis of labor market trends, does not seem to explain the overall shifts in the job market very well. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to address the issues with the concept of skill-biased technological change by looking at some of the common evidence for and against the idea.

One view in favor of SBTC is provided by David Autor, in his paper on the shape of employment growth and Polanyi’s Paradox.¹ In his paper, he describes how earnings changes are related to technological change and automation by discussing Polanyi’s Paradox, which causes the simultaneous growth of high-wage, high-education jobs and low-education, low-wage jobs. He describes Polanyi’s paradox as the constraint on substituting computers for workers. If a worker is not performing a task that has clearly defined rules but instead requires tacit knowledge, computers cannot substitute for that person’s work since the rules of the task are not defined clearly enough for computers to replicate it. Tacit knowledge is defined as knowledge that is understood implicitly but cannot yet be replicated by current coding technology.² Some examples are identifying specific species of birds and writing a persuasive paragraph - things that can be understood implicitly but difficult to describe and quantify in a way that computers can do it.

Computers can still affect tasks that require tacit knowledge, however, by complementing them, making them easier to perform or improving the overall output of those tasks indirectly. So in cases where computers are able to complement tasks, workers can actually benefit from their presence, since they make the jobs performed by the workers easier and more efficient,³ such as jobs like accounting and construction work.⁴ Basically, computers benefit workers who supply tasks that they cannot reproduce, which leads to the conclusion that computers can both help and hurt workers. If they are substitutes for the work that workers perform, they will displace them, but if they complement the work workers perform, then they are beneficial to the job market overall, as productivity growth raises the value of the tasks that only workers can perform. Therefore, the demand and hence the wages paid to the workers who have the skills to perform such tasks will rise.

This overall trend, however, has reduced the number of middle-skill jobs overall, as Autor has found. He states that the trends of quick employment growth in both low and high skill jobs have seen the bottom drop out of the middle of the job market, causing a sharp decrease overall in the availability of formerly middle-class jobs.⁵ This is clear evidence of a wider shift towards the overall growth of jobs that computers complement, which seems to be jobs on either end of the scale. This is causing a shrinking of the availability of middle-class jobs and therefore lowering the number of middle-class people in the country overall. This development is summarized as the “job polarization hypothesis,” which suggests that as a result of SBTC, the overall job growth in the economy has grown at either end of the spectrum, causing a simultaneous increase in high-skill, high income jobs and low-skill, low-income jobs.⁶ Skill-biased technological change postulates that there will be a decrease in the demand for jobs that require routine skills that computers can do, depressing the wages and numbers of those jobs, while it increases the demand for sophisticated skills that enable workers to perform tasks that complement computer technology. When growth in the demand for computer-era skill outpaces the growth in the supply of college-educated people with such skills, the wages of these college-educated members of the labor force will rise.⁷

There are, however, some major issues with skill-biased technological change, as evinced in a paper written by Lazonick et al. where they compare the trends predicted by SBTC to what actually happens for STEM workers, the workers who should ideally benefit the most from the gradual shift towards computers, since the members of the STEM fields work in some of the most high-skilled jobs around, and there is a shortage of them overall.⁸ Therefore, if STEM workers are able to find consistent employment at high wages, SBTC has successfully created a framework for measuring job generation in the real world; if they cannot, it is a strike against that framework. They found that the current careers of STEM workers are characterized by less employment security, shorter job tenure, and declining returns to STEM education than SBTC would predict.⁹

Skill-biased technological change considers education to be the primary means of skill development, in essence implying that skills are determined outside the context of employment. Education level determines whether or not the labor market outcomes of a particular group will be improved. SBTC ignores the possibility of on the job training being relevant to greater wage increases. As Lazonick et al. say, most scientists learn to provide value over time by working on the job and receiving training.¹⁰ They require sustained employment in learning environments after the classroom to obtain the higher wages that SBTC would predict they would. This directly contradicts SBTC since scientists and other STEM people do not generate value for their employers directly from their education, which SBTC uses as an important indicator of which jobs will receive increases. It also contradicts Autor’s idea of job polarization, since this shows that one of the most important groups of high-skilled workers has not received the benefits he envisions they would under SBTC, and also shows that while there may be growth in overall high-skill, high-wage jobs, STEM workers have not received increasing benefits, contrary to what SBTC would have predicted for them.

Also, a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that there has been no real wage polarization between the lower end of the distribution and the middle.¹¹ In addition, they found that changes in occupations do not explain much, if any, of the discrepancy in wages. They found that the share of wage variation explained by occupational differences has actually declined in the 2000s after increasing very slowly through the 1980s and 1990s.¹² Since SBTC predicts an overall growth in jobs depending on how those jobs are affected by computers along with wage increases for those jobs, to have occupational differences not explain as much of wage variation as it did before computers became widespread is directly contradictory to the theory. Also, Autor’s job polarization hypothesis relies on the differences created by computers affecting occupations. To have the explanatory power of wage differentials decline when comparing them suggests that occupations are not as good a predictor of wages as SBTC says they should be. In addition, the EPI paper found no wage polarization between the middle of the income distribution and service wages.¹³ Since Autor intends to explain the growth in the lower end of the distribution by looking at the overall increase in wages and employment in service jobs, the fnding that there was no real difference between the middle of the distribution and service wages blows a hole in the idea that SBTC is contributing to job polarization. Overall, the lack of the predicted wage changes on both ends of the spectrum, when considering scientists and service jobs, clearly shows that STBC and job polarization, while appealing, simply do not ft the data.

Another conceptual framework that provides more problems for the SBTC paradigm are the ideas of the new economy business model (NEBM) and the old economy business model (OEBM) as postulated by Lazonick et al. The old business model consisted of a career with one company for the entire length of one’s working life, complete with promotion opportunities up the chain and a retirement package when the worker retired. This fell out of favor when new tech companies offered employees greater up-front pay in the form of stock options in exchange for a loss in benefits and job tenure, which became the NEBM.¹⁴ This ended up being a trade that many tech employees were happy to make, so companies that had been successful with the OEBM, such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard, transitioned over to the NEBM to cut overall costs. However, this ended up affecting new workers quite adversely. First, this transition ended up reducing the ability of scientists and other high-skilled jobs to receive the training they needed to make a successful transition from college to the workplace. Before, they could stay at one company and learn what they needed to there since the company could safely train them without worrying that they were going to leave. However, under the NEBM, companies are disincentivized to do that because their employees that they spent time training could leave for another company that will give them more upfront pay under the NEBM. This contributes to keeping wages overall of high-skilled laborers lower than they should be since they are not receiving the training necessary to increase their wages and take advantage of the introduction of computers and other cutting-edge technologies. This directly repudiates the idea of SBTC since these high-skilled workers have not seen any benefits from an increase in technology since they lack the skills to benefit. Having an education is not enough for them to take advantage of the benefits that computers provide to their job; they need to receive on the job training in the form of group learning that comes from sustained career employment to learn how to integrate these computers and new technologies into their jobs. Also, interestingly, they fnd that workers’ expected earnings decrease over time. They found that the adoption of the NEBM placed the careers of high-tech workers in jeopardy when they reached 40 or 50, when one would expect them to be at their most productive under OEBM.¹⁵ This shows that over time, since the skills they have learned are becoming more obsolete, that high-skilled workers are actually experiencing a decrease in their expected earnings over time, which contradicts what SBTC would expect since it equates education and more time in the workforce with potential wage increases. Also, the fact that employees tend to get paid in stock also incentivizes companies to focus on using their profits to pump up their stock prices rather than using it to invest in their employees, as Lazonick et al. show. Pfizer and Merck, two of the biggest of the pharmaceutical companies, have spent 66% and 42% of their net income on stock buybacks, and another 60% and 58% on dividends.16 This reinvestment of their profits into jacking up their stock prices shows that overall, companies are no longer trying to create jobs and increase output with their profits. As a result of the NEBM, which incentivizes employees who hold large amounts of stock to work on jacking the prices up, job growth in these sectors has been minimal. This minimal growth in the STEM sector directly contradicts what would be expected from SBTC and the job polarization hypothesis, which would expect large growth in high-skilled jobs, which has not happened. Overall, the tendency of companies to shift from the OEBM to the NEBM has shifted their focus from training their workers to boosting their stock prices, which means that high-skilled jobs are not seeing the payoffs that STBC and the job polarization hypothesis would expect.

There are more empirical issues with SBTC, such as the idea that technological change may not even be the primary driver of changes in wages. A paper by the EPI has stated three points that SBTC and the job polarization hypothesis fail to answer adequately. One important point is the failure of education wage differentials to adequately explain the growth of wage inequality, which mainly happened among workers with similar training and experience.¹⁷ Since rising wage inequality has happened among workers of similar training and experience, education cannot explain it, which directly contradicts SBTC, which claims that education is one of the primary reasons for the growth in wage differences. As well, SBTC fails to adequately explain the massive pay rise among the top 1%.¹⁸ This rise is actually the primary change in the distribution of earnings and should be the focus of any explanation of change in the distribution. The rise in pay is significantly greater than that expected by SBTC and the job polarization hypothesis, which expects pay to rise and more jobs to be created in technology-using occupations. However, not as many additional jobs have been created as would have been expected, and the pay increases to the jobs that are already in place at the top of companies have been significantly larger than SBTC predicts. Third, the observed education wage gaps could be due to something other than technological change, such as changes in unionization, globalization, or in industry regulation.¹⁹ Since this has been observed to be the case, SBTC, which relies exclusively on education gaps to explain the polarization of job and wage growth as a whole, falls flat. If this change is not due to technological advancement, then SBTC loses any sort of foundation it once had.

So now that some alternate views of the job market and an increase in wage inequality have been proposed, how best to fix them? A committee meeting under President Johnson in the 1960s proposed a guaranteed minimum income and free two-year education for displaced workers, which seem like reasonable places to start.²⁰ This will allow workers who have been displaced to derive relevant training, since they can no longer acquire that at companies, and reenter the workforce under the NEBM, which rewards workers with newer, more relevant skills. Also, a guaranteed minimum income will allow these workers to receive this training without having to dip into their savings while they are out of work, which will make workers more likely to take up the offer of reeducation. These measures may help workers who have been displaced by the NEBM obtain relevant skills and reenter the job market.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Autor, David H. “Polanyi’s Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth.” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Economic Policy Proceedings, Reevaluating Labor Market Dynamics (2015): 129–177.

Lazonick, William and Moss, Philip and Salzman, Hal and Tulum, Öner, Skill Development and Sustainable Prosperity: Cumulative and Collective Careers versus Skill-Biased Technical Change,” Working Paper Series, Institute for New Economic Thinking No. 15 (December 8, 2014).

 

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¹ Autor, David H. “Polanyi’s Paradox and the Shape of Employment Growth.” Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: Economic Policy Proceedings, Reevaluating Labor Market Dynamics (2015): 129–177.

² Ibid

³ Ibid

⁴ Ibid

⁵ Ibid

⁶ Ibid

⁷ Ibid

⁸ Lazonick et al. “Skill Development and Sustainable Prosperity: Cumulative and Collective Careers versus Skill-Biased Technical Change,” Working Paper Series, Institute for New Economic Thinking No. 15 (December 8, 2014).

⁹ Ibid

¹⁰ Ibid

¹¹ As quoted in Autor, “Polanyi’s Paradox.”

¹² Ibid

¹³ Ibid

¹⁴ Lazonick et al., “Skill Development.”

¹⁵ Ibid

¹⁶ Ibid

¹⁷ As quoted in Autor, “Polanyi’s Paradox.”

¹⁸ Ibid

¹⁹ Ibid

²⁰ Autor, “Polanyi’s Paradox.”

Elijah Pontes was born and raised in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He majored in Sociology and minored in Business Administration as well as Urban Studies. He was an intern at the Arnold M. Dubin UMass Dartmouth Labor Education Center. He hopes to one day find a career that can help him provide opportunities for inner city youth.

 

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**Second Place Award for Research**

 

Abstract: This paper addresses the high segregation levels in U.S. schools. It utilizes U.S. history in an investigation of how these highly segregated schools in the came to be. It also examines the deep impact that a segregated education can have on both black and white students.

 

Segregation has continuously and effectively reproduced inequalities in our society and is one of the greatest reinforcers of the white racial frame. The white racial frame is a way of viewing the world that whites use to rationalize the vast inequalities in our society and ignore the oppression that minorities in America face. It is taught to children at a very young age and can be seen in every aspect of American culture. The white racial frame is impossible to escape and is in fact so influential that it is adopted by many people of color as well. It is responsible for the perpetuation of many social injustices that put African Americans at a disadvantage, the most significant of which being the revival of segregated education. The impact of segregation on education is by far the most serious consequence because it is the most important tool for social mobility in our society. Social mobility is the ability of individuals to change classes and ascend the socioeconomic ladder. Throughout my paper I will prove that educational segregation is still alive and well in America, investigate how educational segregation has come about in our society, research the impact of segregation on quality of education, and show that segregated education undermines social mobility in black communities.

It took almost two centuries for the U.S. to take an active anti-racist stance and make strides toward desegregation. America has made many efforts to desegregate the nation and now it seems as though many of those efforts have gone to waste as school segregation levels have been rising steadily since 1988. By 1998 school integration levels had reached forty three percent (the percentage of black children attending majority white schools).¹ However, a measurement of the same statistic five years ago reveals that this percentage has dropped to twenty three percent, which is lower than it was 48 years ago in 1968.² This statistic is especially shocking when one takes into account that white public school enrollment rates have dropped twenty eight percent between 1968 and 2011.³ However, during this same time span black public school enrollment rates have increased by nineteen percent and Latino rates have jumped four hundred and ninety-five percent. The average white student in America today attends a school that is seventy-five percent white, on average will be in a class of thirty students, and will have twenty-one white classmates, two black classmates and four Latino.⁴ The numbers seem to suggest that desegregation is much more achievable now than it was after Brown v. Board of Education, so how is it possible that segregation levels have actually risen since 1968? Who is responsible for America’s inaction in the face of resegregation?

After Brown v. Board of Education, school districts were forced into desegregation efforts which had to be monitored by the courts. In 1991 in the case of Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, the court ruled that a school district could be released from the desegregation order if it showed that it could follow the order. However, during the early 2000s, supervision from the courts slowly began to dwindle. From 1990 to 2009 forty-five percent of all school districts had been released from court supervision and during the early 2000s approximately fifteen schools a year were released from court oversight.⁵ After a district is released from court supervision they can stop all school desegregation efforts in the district without consequence. This made it very easy for many schools to resegregate after being released from oversight. Ian Millhiser argues that in truth peak desegregation efforts only lasted 10 years because they did not truly begin until a decade after Brown. Furthermore, he adds, it was only twenty years after Brown that the courts began putting restrictions on desegregation.⁶ A quick look at the history of enrollment rates for black students in white schools in the south shows that as soon as the courts began putting limits on desegregation in the late 1980s, integration levels began falling. The results of America’s desegregation efforts were being reversed only twenty years after they began. So it should be no shock to the public that our schools are more segregated now than they were in the late eighties. 

Lastly, schools that are left without court supervision tend to become more segregated as time goes on, especially when compared with schools that are under court supervised desegregation orders.⁷ The U.S. has allowed integration levels to fall and black students are paying the price. It has been about half a century since the Supreme Court determined “separate but equal” to be invalid and that separate schooling is inherently unequal. However, the effects of segregation are still shaping the lives of black students. Education is the most important part of a child’s life and it is greatly influenced by segregation.

Blacks are deeply affected by the system of resource allocation. One study showed that a student’s chance of graduating when attending an integrated school increased by 2% every year as well as an extra $5,900 in expected annual family income and a lower chance of experiencing poverty.⁸ Clearly the attendance of black students at under-resourced schools is greatly impeding their success. Segregation, when combined with underfunded educational facilities, leads to crippling impoverishment and only serves to hinder the education received by African Americans in urban communities.

While many may claim that the end of school segregation came with the decision in Brown v. Board of Education, in reality school segregation simply took a new form. The legal barriers that separated white students and minority students pre- Brown v. Board of Education have now simply been disguised as class differences. The “new segregation” keeps poor students out of high-achieving schools; it is no coincidence that most of these poor students are black while the majority of students attending the best schools are white. Linda Darling-Hammond reveals how these dividing lines in education were only made deeper by government action in her article “Race Inequality and Educational Accountability- The Irony of ‘No Child Left Behind.’” Darling-Hammond investigates the impacts of No Child Left Behind and, astoundingly, her findings show that the act did much more harm than good. The main fault in No Child Left Behind is the intense focus on test scores. Test scores were the deciding factor in measuring the success of a school. This single aspect of the act had destructive impacts on poorly-funded schools. Schools that do not meet expectations for increasing test scores are penalized.

These schools are labeled as “failing” and forced to pay for the transfer of students who choose to do so.⁹ However, many schools that fail to meet these expectations struggle to do so because of their poor funding and limited resources. Furthermore, while the labeling of a school as “failing” is meant to pressure the facility to improve their standard, it ends up having the opposite effect as it is very difficult for a school with this label to attract high quality, or even qualified teachers.¹⁰ Basing the success of a school on test scores does not encourage an improvement in education, but instead forces schools to shrink their curricula and encourages them to exclude struggling students. In addition, the students that are not excluded emerge from high school with standardized test skills instead of reading, writing, and critical thinking skills that can be applied to real life.¹¹

While the schools are being punished, it is the students who are really suffering. The emphasis that is placed on test scores in this country motivates schools to push out students that do not meet the school’s standards; this results in higher dropout rates for low income students in the inner city. A high school dropout does not have many options in our society. There are very few ways for someone with an eighth-grade education to survive in our society, especially in urban areas. Therefore, students that have been labeled a “lost cause” and have been abandoned by the very institutions meant to save them often end up imprisoned. Little do they know that they had been set on a path toward incarceration long before their sentencing. Kenneth J. Saltman explains the difference between low- and high-income schools. He examines how “Mountainview” (wellfunded, suburban, predominantly white schools) and “Groundview” (poorly-funded, inner-city, predominantly black schools) differ in terms of the educational environment provided for students. He argues that the two types of schools are separated by a “culture of privilege” that is simply not present in Groundview schools. Instead, Groundview schools focus on discipline and therefore produce an educational environment structured around regulation and control.¹² The disciplinary tone in Groundview schools is highlighted by the presence of metal detectors and security guards. Students are not allowed in the hall during class without a pass. There are guards in every hallway and those caught without a pass are punished with detention immediately. The prison-like environment prepares students for incarceration. Additionally, it is no coincidence that in 2007 black students were more than three times as likely to be suspended from school as white students.¹³ After graduation, black male students are three times as likely to face future imprisonment.¹⁴ Even those students that manage to avoid imprisonment will still face many roadblocks in their life due to the wide gap in education based on class.

When one contemplates how white students are influenced by a segregated education the consequences are also damaging. A student that is raised in a completely whitewashed environment absent of minorities is a recipe for ignorance to spread. A student raised in such an environment has no experience with minorities and therefore cannot produce an accurate perception of minorities. Instead he is forced to rely on his teachers and parents for information about said groups, both of which were most likely raised in an environment similar to his own.

Once the white racial frame is taught to the next generation, the perpetuation of a cyclical pattern of racism is ensured. Lastly, white students attending the most affluent schools in the country means that they will be receiving the best jobs, putting them in a better position than minority students. So when a black student finally finishes his schooling, each time he tries to climb the socioeconomic ladder of our society he will first have to face the judgment of a man who has been raised entrenched in the white racial frame.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amurao, Carla. “Fact Sheet: How Bad Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?” Beat the Streets, Inc. Accessed May 02, 2016. https://www.beatthestreetsca.org/single-post/2016/07/15/Fact-Sheet-How-Bad-Is-the-SchooltoPrison-Pipeline.

Breslow, Jason M. “The Return of School Segregation in Eight Charts.” Frontline. July 15, 2014. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-return-of-school-segregation-in-eight-charts/.

Darling-Hammond, Linda. “Race, inequality and educational accountability: the irony of ‘No Child Left Behind.’” Race Ethnicity and Education Vol. 10, Issue 3 (2007), 245-260. Accessed May 3, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613320701503207.

Millhiser, Ian. “American Schools Are More Segregated Now Than They Were In 1968, And The Supreme Court Doesn’t Care.” Think Progress, August 13, 2015. https://thinkprogress.org/american-schools-are-more-segregated-now-than-they-were-in-1968-and-the-supreme-court-doesnt-care-cc7abbf6651c/

Saltman, Kenneth J. “Education as Enforcement: Militarization and Corporatization of Schools.” Race, Poverty & the Environment 14, no. 2 (2007): 28-30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41554551.

 

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¹ Ian Millhiser, “American Schools Are More Segregated Now Than They Were In 1968, And The Supreme Court Doesn’t Care,” Think Progress, August 21, 2015, https://thinkprogress.org/american-schools-are-more-segregated-now-than-they-were-in-1968-and-the-supreme-court-doesnt-care-cc7abbf6651c/.

² Millhiser, “American Schools.”

³ Jason Breslow, “The Return of School Segregation in Eight Charts,” Frontline, July 15, 2014. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-return-of-school-segregation-in-eight-charts/.

⁴ Breslow, “Return.”

⁵ Ibid

⁶ Millhiser, “American Schools.”

⁷ Breslow, “Return.”

⁸ Ibid

⁹ Linda Darling-Hammond, “Race, inequality and educational accountability: the irony of ‘No Child Left Behind.’” Race Ethnicity and Education Vol. 10, Issue 3 (2007), 245-260.

¹⁰ Ibid

¹¹ Ibid

¹² Kenneth J. Saltman, “Education as Enforcement: Militarization and Corporatization of Schools,” Race, Poverty & the Environment, 14, no. 2 (2007): 28-30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41554551.

¹³ Carla Amurao, “Fact Sheet: How Bad Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?” Beat the Streets, Inc. https://www.beatthestreetsca.org/single-post/2016/07/15/Fact-Sheet-How-Bad-Is-the-SchooltoPrison-Pipeline.

¹⁴ Ibid

Katherine McCormick is a recent UMass Boston graduate with a major in Anthropology and minor in Labor Studies who is eternally grateful to the Labor Studies department for catapulting her into the arena she belongs in. She is passionate about workers’ rights, immigrant rights, racial/economic justice issues, animal rights, and climate change. She is currently a labor organizer, working to strengthen unions and pass worker-friendly legislation, with the long-term goal of getting a masters in Labor History and helping other universities set up/reinvigorate their own Labor programs, so other students can have the same opportunity she had at UMass.

 

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**First Place Award for Activist Reflection**

 

 

 

First Action: Philly Airport Workers

July 2017: Low wage airport workers at the Philadelphia airport demand a fair contract from American Airlines and are prepared to strike if negotiations don’t go in a favorable direction. At the 11th hour, American Airlines agrees to sit down with the union and draft a contract. To bring attention to unacceptable working conditions and poverty wages, we shut down an entire terminal of the airport with a huge rally. We were joined by faith groups, other unions, the airports fast food workers, elected officials, the president of SEIU, and hundreds of concerned citizens who came to express solidarity with the some of the poorest and most vulnerable workers in Philly. At the rally, I realized that these workers (mostly immigrants) were not vulnerable or powerless; in fact, these workers had tremendous strength. Despite language barriers and cultural differences, workers from all over the world banded together and spoke with one, loud, clear voice: demanding that American Airlines cease the abuse and provide their employees with basic necessities. Every worker I talked to told me that it wasn’t about a higher wage or healthcare benefits, but instead, it was about being treated with dignity while at work.

 

 

 

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Second Action: Protesting ICE at the State House

August 2017: Here we are at the State House, furious at the legislature for not going forward with the Safe Communities Act. Charlie Baker has essentially allowed our state and local police force to assist the ICE in fnding and detaining our undocumented neighbors. Francisco Rodriguez, a father, a husband, a janitor at MIT, a small business owner and active member of 32BJ was detained in late July 2017 when he went for his routine immigration check-in at the Federal Building, while his wife was going into labor with their third child. An outpouring of support erupted from the city of Boston and surrounding areas. MIT students formed a protective barrier around other immigrants who were in danger to send a symbolic message to the State House that they cannot and will not continue to let ICE terrorize our communities. State Rep. Mike Connolly made an impassioned speech, people held signs that read “Stop The Ice Age,” and “We Are Here To Stay.” In such a depressing political climate, it was really wonderful to gather together and protest the American Gestapo, however: sign-holding and speech-making only goes so far. Despite our rallies, the Safe Communities Act was put on the back burner. Our immigrant brothers and sisters are at risk in Massachusetts and we need to make political decisions as a Commonwealth to elect a leadership that will not play ball with the Trump Administration.

 

 

 

 

Aspiring writer and journalist Sade Smith is a recent grad from UMass Dartmouth with a Bachelors in English. While she writes poetry and short stories in her spare time, she is most passionate about exploring the ins and outs of the world, hoping to travel and document the global human experience.

 

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**First Place Award for Creative Work**

 

Artist’s Statement: My writing of this part of my life helped me establish a voice. A voice I felt should be heard. Moments of identity crises and discovering my sexuality shaped that voice into what I think is one of strength and growth. Two things that anyone who reads my story can relate to. A story that will compel audiences and soothe its creator. This is what artistic development is about.

 

Circa October 2015

I took another shot of something-from-the-weekend and for the 40th time, checked my hair and scanned my room for signs of anxiety, parallel to my mind at the moment. I was always nervous talking to girls. Almost never with guys. I could obtain and toss any guy I wanted. But a girl was more beautiful, more valuable. Like me. “Sweet Pea” was coming over for the first time since my embarrassing (cute to her) drunken confession to her at a party the weekend before. I figured if I had the same liquid courage as that night, then this visit shouldn’t be so bad. I had our schedule for the night; play music, smoke, small talk. I went through this short list over and over to calm my nerves as she knocked on the door. I had to count to five before opening the door. Not because it was some coy tactic. But because I was grinning like the fucking “IT” clown. The last girl I was romantically involved with wasn’t even gay. She was “just looking for some fun”, as if homosexuality was an amusement park for the heteros. I couldn’t entertain these girls anymore. But I went all out for this one. She was strong and beautiful, like the Queen of Kush. I fell in love with her before I even knew her name. During a Black Student Union meeting the semester earlier, she shared with the group a racist encounter she had on campus. After her class in LARTS watched the “Black Lives Matter” march across campus, some bold white boy called her and every other Black person a nigger and instead of arguing, she proceeded to land a clean punch across his face. Admirable. As Vice President at the time, I did my best to ensure that she was alright and let her know I was a resource to her. I didn’t know until the umpteenth visit, but she fell in love with me then too. After a while, we became very attached to each other. Whispering our hopes and dreams in the middle of the night next to her, I had never felt safer. We were able to be completely comfortable and true to ourselves around each other like friends, and still be lovers. I think the obvious societal distaste with homosexuality barred us so much from the world, that we simply created our own. It was sweet, like her.

“I find women attractive. I think if I didn’t, I wouldn’t find myself attractive.” –Grace Jones, 1985.

 

Circa April 2017

I never thought I would come out to my mother. Her Christian upbringing was shoved so far down my throat, I choked until I left home for school. But her almost-divorce from my stepfather changed her a lot. I like her much better now to say the least. And when you start becoming friends with your parents, you actually want them to know shit about you. It’s weird. So I resolved to tell her and get it over with. I sifted through ideal situations for days, and then one Monday she texts me that she’s coming up to take me out for lunch. Perfect. But also fuck. Although we weren’t together anymore, Sweet Pea and I still had a really great friendship. In a panic, I called her and told her what I planned to do. She was supportive but cautioned me not to rush it just because I wanted to tell her. But I knew it was the right time. After a nervous sit down at Applebee’s, I finalized my script and decided to take her outside for a stroll.

“Mom, I have something to tell you.” My mom was impatient when it comes to these things, but I couldn’t help but lag.

“I hope you still love me…and I don’t know if you’ve known, or how long you’ve known…I’m bisexual.” She laughed a little, which at first was disheartening to me.

But then she said, “I will always love you sweetie. And I’ve kinda known, since you were in high school maybe.”

I looped my arm through hers and as we continued to talk about it, I felt so much weight fall off my shoulders. I told her why I chose now to tell her. We were in a country where the man in charge openly bashed homosexuals, Muslims, liberals and the like. My mom has always known where I stood with accepting and loving my Blackness, as she was a major part of that growth. And I wanted, no needed that same support from her with my sexuality. She always knew what to say and urged me to be careful because “people are crazy out here.” I think my mom is coming into that age group where you just stop giving a fuck. Mostly about other people’s opinions on you, especially unhelpful ones. So I knew she meant it when she reminded me to stay honest to myself, first and foremost.

She asked me if I would tell Davlon. My dad. The big one. While my dad is seemingly less uptight than my mother in some matters, his Southern upbringing allows room for ignorance. I actually hadn’t seriously thought about it until she asked. I wondered how he would react. Lots of questions, I know. But would I still be his baby girl? My father had a gay comrade in the military for a few years, Sergeant Becker. My dad would bring me onto base with him to work some days, and I would chat with his staff, telling them about the horrors of the North. Sgt. Becker would show me pictures from his most recent vacations, mostly solo. I always thought, “what a free life.” But driving home from base that day, my dad told me that a lot of his family had disowned him after he came out, and I thought, “would that be me?”

My dad has made it clear that he doesn’t care for “gay folk” and what they do. Mostly because of his deep religion in minding your business. But overall, he does not understand why anyone would be attracted to someone of the same sex. In the South, this is a part of the Christian religion that is spoken of once and frmly. “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood [shall be] upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13) And for young Southern belles and gentlemen, knowing each scripture and its translation into society was as important as your church shoes being unscuffed. So I decided for now, that I would save that conversation for my father on his deathbed.

Joy O’Halloran is an English Major at UMass Boston. Joy grew up in Boston and has a particular interest in youth rights and education reform.

 

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**Third Place Award for Research**

 

Abstract: Given the crises that public higher education is currently facing, we are in desperate need of creative solutions. Not all creative solutions are necessarily worthy of equal consideration, however. In this essay, I analyze and critique Charles Murray’s 2008 essay “Are Too Many People Going to College?”, an essay riddled with creative but bad ideas for how to fx public higher education. Although Murray’s proposals are refreshingly out-of-the-box, his logic is fundamentally, dangerously flawed. I take particular issue with the underlying assumptions behind his use of “percentiles” to frame matters of individual skill level; his conception of “academic ability” as a monolithic, quantifiable skill; and his Core Knowledge approach to elementary and middle school education. I conclude that Murray’s vision for education in the United States is, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, one that will lead to a society which is more stratified by class, not less.

 

Given the contemporary crises of higher education in the United States—increasing tuition, rising student debt, and a general trend toward neoliberalism (Clawson and Page 2011)—anyone willing to propose out-of-the-box solutions has my ear. Therefore, when I encountered an essay titled “Are Too Many People Going to College?” (Murray 2008), my interest was piqued. Murray offers a critique of postsecondary education in the United States, arguing that the goals of a liberal arts education should be fulfilled in grades K-12, and that only a small number of people would actually benefit from college. However, I quickly discovered that Murray’s logic is riddled with contradictions and false assumptions. As interesting as the ideas he presents are, I cannot agree with his vision of an ideal society. In particular, I take issue with his overreliance on mathematical distributions to frame individual strengths and weaknesses, his conception of “academic ability,” and his specific proposals for elementary and middle school education.

Throughout his essay, Murray frequently refers to individual skills by way of percentiles. At one point he offers the example of a high school student deciding between two careers. The student cannot decide whether to become an electrician or to attend college in hopes of becoming a business manager. If, Murray argues, this boy is “at the 70th percentile in linguistic ability and logical mathematical ability…exactly average in interpersonal and intrapersonal ability…[and] at the 95th percentile in…small-motor skills and spatial abilities,” then he should become an electrician. While it is certainly true that each person has their own strengths and weaknesses, I am troubled by the use of percentiles to frame this fact. The unspoken implication of such language is that people are stuck at certain skill levels for their whole lives. The high school student in Murray’s example just is mediocre at building relationships; he just is decent, but not great, at math; he will never be anything else. Those who believe that human beings are capable of learning new skills and sharpening old ones, and that this is in fact the entire purpose of education, should take offense at this notion. Furthermore, framing skill levels in terms of percentiles completely ignores the benefts of higher education for society at large. Being “in the 70th percentile” of mathematical skill, for example, would mean something different if everyone were expected to learn integral calculus than it would if most people just learned basic arithmetic. If everyone in the United States received a liberal college education, then the entire nation would hone its critical reading, writing, and thinking skills. Society as a whole would improve, even if one person’s skill level relative to everyone else’s—that person’s “percentile”—would not.

One distribution which Murray frequently refers to is that of “academic ability.” He suggests, for example, that “a young woman who is in the 98th percentile of academic ability” would benefit from a liberal college education, while those “at the 80th percentile of academic ability” would not. The very idea of “academic ability” as a measurable quality grossly oversimplifies the skills required for success in college, which include listening, reading, writing, memorization, mathematics, interpersonal communication, time management, self-advocacy, and test-taking—among others. Where does a student fall on Murray’s “percentile of academic ability” who can write fluently but has difficulty reading sophisticated texts, or one who excels at memorizing information and taking tests but lacks critical writing skills? Perhaps he would say that anyone who possesses some but not all of the skills required for college is simply unft for a college education. Personally, I believe that colleges should provide resources to assist students in those areas where they struggle. This is not just to ensure their success in college, but in life, since almost all of these skills are applicable outside academia.

 Despite these glaring flaws in his central argument, Murray still raises some interesting questions. What if a basic liberal education was provided in primary and secondary school, and college was reserved for those pursuing a career that specifically required it? He goes on to explain the idea of cultural literacy, the “body of core knowledge” required to fully participate in American culture. “All American children,” he claims, “of whatever ethnic heritage, and whether their families came here 300 years ago or three months ago, need to learn about the Pilgrims, Valley Forge, Duke Ellington, Apollo 11, Susan B. Anthony, George C. Marshall, and the Freedom Riders. All students need to learn the iconic stories.” I fundamentally disagree. Many of these so-called “iconic stories” paint an incomplete picture of our nation’s history by emphasizing its good points while glossing over the ugly ones. When a friend of mine who had immigrated from China first learned about colonialism in his new elementary school, he was so appalled that he burst into tears. Although the history by itself is upsetting, how it was taught is what really bothered him. The tragedy that befell so many Native American societies was mentioned briefly and then forgotten about, and the teacher painted an overall rosy picture of colonialism. My own experience has been similar. I bring up this example to demonstrate that many of what Murray calls “iconic stories” are best understood as part of a romanticized or even mythologized retelling of American history. Even those examples he gives, like Duke Ellington or Apollo 11, that do not by themselves serve to sugarcoat our bloody history do not strike me as so important for everyone to know that they must mandated by the state.

Finally, even if I did not take issue with the specific pieces of “core knowledge” Murray advocates, his vision for K-8 schooling does not in any way, shape, or form resemble a liberal arts education. Even while arguing that “a lot more than memorization is entailed” in the Core Knowledge approach, he stresses that “memorizing things in an indispensable part of education, too,” and “something that children do much, much better than adults.” Contrary to Murray’s vision of elementary and middle school students simply memorizing a government-approved Core Knowledge curriculum, liberal education fundamentally entails critical thinking: the ability to engage with multiple conflicting views, to treat accepted wisdom skeptically, and to form one’s own opinion. How anyone could believe that rote memorization in middle school is an acceptable substitute for critical thinking at the college level is, frankly, beyond me.

This, then, is the basis of Charles Murray’s argument: College is not for everyone. No one should seek education beyond high school unless their career path specifically requires it, which very few career paths should. High school students who do not yet know what career they want to pursue should make up their minds. Rather than being taught to engage critically with the world, elementary and middle school students should be made to memorize a watered-down, sanitized version of our nation’s cultural heritage. Thus, despite entertaining the idea that “we should not restrict… a liberal education to a rarefed intellectual elite,” this is exactly what Murray proposes. It is not a vision of education, of our country, or of the world that I can support.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clawson, Dan and Max Page. The Future of Higher Education. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2015.

Murray, Charles. “Are Too Many People Going to College?” American Enterprise Institute, September 8, 2008. http://www.aei.org/publication/are-too-many-people-going-to-college.

Jesse Johnson is an undergraduate student at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Their work focuses on the significance of observing the proletariat as the spectre as opposed to the zombie when drawing metaphorical allusions between monsters and social realities. They draw inspiration from a deep involvement in both activism and fantasy literature.

 

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Abstract: Creatures of myth have been used as a means of social control and metaphor for as long as they have existed. Often we like to think that the use of mythological creatures in understanding the world is a thing of the past, however with a deeper analysis of them we can see clearly that they are still very much effective metaphors and expressions of society today. In this paper we will respectively be observing the significance of the metaphorical zombie and vampire as representatives of the proletariat and bourgeoisie before focusing on a third entity as the true spirit of the working class and labor-friendly social movements by analyzing the first line of the Communist Manifesto and its implications of the proletariat being better represented as the spectre.

 

Two of the most well-known monsters of myth are the vampire in all its decadence and the zombie ever hungering as it shambles onward. Monsters arise in stories and myth for many reasons, but it is no question that the ones which achieve infamy do so by connecting on some level to the social reality of the time. These creatures touch upon some buried knowledge or social anxiety and manifest it in a reflective way.

The current era can be considered the age of the zombie, its popularity raising in tandem with the increasingly uneven distribution of wealth and further decline of livable wages. The zombie fulfills a dual purpose to the proletariat as a creature of metaphor. As the proletariat continues to struggle to make ends meet, pay bills, eat, and combat the ever-growing tide of expenses and mounting complications, the zombie becomes an outlet reflective of this sea of responsibilities and dire necessities. Each individual zombie by itself is mundane and unremarkable, but en masse they become an overwhelming force that the hero can do little more than attempt to dispatch one by one or fee from only to be inevitably surrounded once more.

Conversely, the zombie fulfills another role altogether to the proletariat, as the proletariat itself. This may be the most accepted metaphor of the zombie, as it paints the proletariat as a mindless, unkempt and hungering creature. Faceless among a sea of thousands, able to do little more than shamble along desperately seeking its next meal, or to pay its next bill. Interest in the metaphor of the zombie has grown and zombies have been tied to everything from growing fears of disease to a growing desperation in consumerism.¹ The zombie is simple, cheap and easily replaced, in stark contrast to the vampire and the bourgeoisie.

Records of vampiric mythology date back to before the time of Lord Byron as having caused panics and terror among the peasantry and the working class with people going as far as to exhume and desecrate the corpses of loved ones.² It is a soulless abomination instilled with eternal youth and health, known for its decadence and its ravenous thirst for blood. It is upon this latter note that many scholars make the connection between vampires and the aristocracy or the ruling class bourgeoisie. By drinking the blood of its victim, the bourgeoisie vampire is in effect exploiting the working class, drinking their very life-blood. It is taking their labor and life to artifcially extend and empower its own. The very visage of the vampire expands upon this in contrast to the proletariat zombie. Its unnatural youth is an effect of the lifestyle it affords at the expense of the proletariat, eating the fnest foods and the best wines. Affording unrivaled medical care and legal representation, it is undying and unaging.

One need only look to the aristocracy of the time, the CEO, to see how even in their extended age they rarely show the same signs of aging as their exploited workers. What is most peculiar about the vampire however is that its greatest threat is not starvation, or even bodily destruction, but the light of the sun. To drag it into the light, so that it can be seen clearly and understood fully, is the greatest threat to its power and the most assured means of its destruction.

“A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of communism.”³ It is likely that the first sentence of the Communist Manifesto was written metaphorically with these allusions in mind, attributing the likeness of a spectre to the spirit of the working class. While the zombie can be dispatched, and the vampire can be destroyed, the spectre is truly immortal. Born of humankind, not unlike the zombie, it is an entity that anyone can become given simple-to-meet conditions. When Karl Marx wrote of the spectre it was likely to speak to the implications of such attributions.

The spectre is no ordinary ghost or apparition; rather it is an insidious force which looms ever present beyond the periphery. The spectre is defned as something widely feared as a possible unpleasant or dangerous occurrence. In a world where the primary actor and wielder of agency is the ruling class bourgeoisie, this defnition accurately defnes the growth of labor- friendly ideologies. These include the ideology of international socialism, due to the inherent threat and danger it poses to the established dichotomy of labor and exploitation wherein the elite few are able to proft off of the exploitation of the many. Such a disruption would no doubt be unpleasant to the ruling class who stand to be displaced and made equal to the common laborer, as opposed to the unseen master.

The spectre’s form is ethereal and bound to the masses, making it particularly hard to eliminate, as through the destruction of its form a harm is done not only to the haunting but to the vampire as well. Its destruction means the destruction of the proletariat to which it is bound and in effect means the loss of a potential source of subsistence for the bourgeoisie vampire. What’s more is that unlike its counterparts, even if it is destroyed, the spectre can rise once more in such a way that neither the zombie nor the vampire can achieve. Wealth and poverty must be reproduced, yet even in isolation a spectre can manifest itself as it takes only the dream that all should be treated fairly and be afforded what is due to them, paired with the will to defy exploitation, for a spectre to be born, and from its birth another haunting can grow to engulf the world.

The way in which the haunting of the spectre works then is to be the beacon of light which the vampire so direly fears. The haunting then is known by another name, class consciousness, as the spectre is not an isolated haunting and by its nature inspires solidarity. This historically has caused such things as the invention of the labor union and work regulations. Every labor strike and combined effort of the proletariat is an effect of the haunting. Every question raised and law passed against the institutionalized violence of the ruling class is a ripping of the curtain veil releasing a beam of light which burns the vampire deeper.

The notion of the spectre haunting Europe, as expressed by Karl Marx is one of incredible accuracy and metaphorical relevance speaking volumes of its own as to the indomitability of the spirit of the working class in its enduring effort to effect social change within the world as the citizens of it. This concludes that the proletariat is indeed not the zombie, but rather the spectre.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Klosterman, Chuck. “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead” New York Times, 3 Dec. 2010. https://www.nytimes .com/2010/12/05/arts/television/05zombies.html?pagewanted=all.

Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. Edited by Samuel Moore and David McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Tucker, Abigail. “Meet the Real-Life Vampires of New England and Abroad.” Smithsonian Magazine, 1 Oct. 2012. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/meet-the-real-life-vampires-of-new-england-and-abroad-42639093/.

 

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¹ Chuck Klosterman, “My Zombie, Myself: Why Modern Life Feels Rather Undead,” New York Times, December 3, 2010.

² Abigail Tucker, “Meet the Real-Life Vampires of New England and Abroad,” Smithsonian Magazine, October 1, 2012. https://www.smithsonianmag.com /history/meet-the-real-life-vampires-of-new-england-and-abroad-42639093/

³ Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ed. Samuel Moore and David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 1.

The UMass Undergraduate Journal on Work, Labor and Social Movements is accepting original submissions from undergraduate students currently enrolled at any University of Massachusetts campus. The journal brings together undergraduate work that displays academic excellence and offers critical insights on the experience of working people and their organizations. The journal encourages submissions that foster an exchange of ideas across disciplines and that deepen our understanding of the ways in which varying axes of oppression, including gender, race/ethnicity, country of origin, language and sexual orientation, shape the lives of workers.

The journal is currently accepting submissions for its Spring 2019 issue. Submissions will be accepted in three categories: Research, Creative and Activist Reflection. In addition to being included in the publication, the top three pieces in each submission category will be eligible to receive a cash prize.

In each category, First Place submissions will receive a $200 award; Second Place will receive $150; and Third Place will receive $75.

Deadline for submissions is April 30, 2019. 

Please send submissions to the Editorial Board member on your campus:

Amherst: Clare Hammonds, [email protected]

Boston: Anneta Argyres, [email protected]

Dartmouth: Camilo Viveiros, [email protected]

Lowell: Susan Winning, [email protected]

Submission Guidelines

Who Can Submit?

Undergraduates enrolled at any University of Massachusetts are encouraged to submit. Those who are graduates may submit an undergraduate work within the first twelve months after graduation. Submissions may be co-authored with other undergraduate students. We will accept co-authored work with faculty in which the undergraduate student is the lead author.

General Submission Rules and Formatting Guidelines

Submitted articles cannot have been previously published elsewhere. Submitted text files should be 12pt Times New Roman Font, double spaced with 1-inch margins. All submitted files should be in Microsoft Word Format (.doc of .docx). Any images or figures may be submitted at .jpg or .pdf format. Please include a list of all figures, images or graphics submitted. All submissions should also follow the Chicago Manual of Style, including footnotes with page numbers and a bibliography. Upon acceptance, it will be the responsibility of the author to format the finalized version so that it adheres to the Author Guidelines.

For each submitted article, we ask that the other also prepare an abstract of approximately 150-250 words that should be submitted electronically in a Microsoft word document.

Each submitted document should include the author(s) full name(s), University, major, expected graduation date, and email address.

Submission Categories

Research

Research articles report original research and assess its contribution to our understanding of labor and work. The undergraduate student should be the primary author on the article. If the article was completed in collaboration with a faculty member, please be sure to note that contribution. Research submissions should not exceed 7,000 words, approximately 16 pages, including footnotes. Please consult the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style for proper manuscript form and footnote citation style.

Creative

The journal is interested in various types of art and written creative expression that offer critical insights into issues of work, labor and social movements. We currently welcome all forms of written expression including, but not limited to poetry and short fiction in all forms. Because of space constraints we are unable to publish pieces that run longer than 15 pages or about 5,500 words.

Artists may submit a single piece or a series. A series may not be longer than 4 pages, however exceptions may be considered on a case-by-case basis. The artwork may be in any medium, but all works must be able to be reproduced in print. The piece should be submitted electronically as we are not able to accept physical copies of any artwork. Images must have a vertical orientation and a resolution of 77ppi. An artist statement should accompany each submission. These statements should be approximately two pages long and are expected to provide context and analysis for the work.

Activist Reflection

We welcome critical reflection pieces that draw on students’ engagement in a service learning project, or on a work or activist experience. These pieces should describe the experience and offer general reflections on work and labor. Please limit the length to 5,500 words or less.

Selection and Review Process

The University of Massachusetts Labor Extension program reviews all submissions and makes final selections for publication. Not all submissions will be accepted for publication. Papers selected for publication will meet the following criteria:

• Significance to the journal’s mission of promoting an interdisciplinary dialogue on labor and work
• Well-developed research design and methodology (where applicable)
• Well-written and developed presentation

 

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This project is funded by the Future of Work initiative from the University of Massachusetts President’s office.

 

The Future of Work is a joint research project of the Labor Centers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell, funded by the University of Massachusetts’ President’s Office with monies provided by the Massachusetts legislature. The project encompasses diverse research efforts to describe, analyze, and document the rapid transformation that work is undergoing in Massachusetts, including the introduction of new technologies and new forms of work organization, and what that means for workers and their unions.