Intruder in the Dust?

by Brian Wright

from Inquiry, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2002, 47-50

© Copyright 2002 Virginia Community College System

Abstract
Wright compares the twenty-first century adjunct faculty member to the nineteenth-century sharecropper.

Recently, while preparing notes for an American History class, I noticed something new.  As I laid the groundwork to lead my students into the unique social climate of the U.S. South after the Civil War, I tried to focus on the multifaceted political and social landscape of the day.  As anyone who has studied the post Civil War South knows, it is often an area of study where idealism and reality are at odds. This dualism is something I have discussed in class many times; however, this time I saw something new.  I saw myself.  More precisely, I saw myself as the modern day embodiment of a particular type of Southern dualism.

Let me put it another way: if higher education were the post Civil War South, adjunct faculty would find themselves caught between this very reality and idealism.  We are necessary to the system.  It would falter without us.  Yet, our very existence represents a defect in that same system.  The way things should be and the way they actually are epitomize the innate weakness involved in most idealistic notions.  In other words, reality is often the easy way out; preservation of the status quo is often the least offensive way to avoid a problem.  That said, I saw myself caught in this quagmire of dualism, this preservation of the status quo.  I had become a higher education sharecropper.

We are all well aware of the definition of a sharecropper.  But what were they really?  Sharecroppers were individuals caught up in the idealism of their day.  In an era of new freedoms, they thought they were going to get a chance at equality.  At the very least, they looked forward to a few acres of land and a mule.  They wanted a place they could call their own: a place where they worked for themselves, not someone else.  More directly, they wanted a place where their work was to their own benefit.

What they actually got was something different. Instead of joining the ranks of the landowners, many black and white families found themselves bound to a revised system of Southern indenture because of their historic social standing (or lack thereof).  Their insufficient monetary resources prohibited the pursuit of their dreams.  As a result, slavery simply found a new name because of this lack of financial independence.  The idealistic world many had in mind for the freedmen and the very poor died a quick death.

Still, the new system of indenture gave the illusion that sharecroppers were successful.  This would be the argument used by the authorities of the day to support the sharecropping system. By claiming the sharecroppers had some land and a mule, they simply supported their own sense of superiority—the status quo.

In reality, all that the sharecroppers really had plenty of was work.  They had enough of that to keep them busy into the evening hours of every night of the week.  What they didn’t have was the security that could be offered by the land and the mule and the work.  In this new form of indenture, the land, the mule, and the work benefited and belonged to someone else.

In essence, they found themselves in a system that was akin to feudalism.  In exchange for their personal labor, these sharecroppers would be allowed to live on a landowner’s property for a price and pay to use his equipment. A portion of what he worked out would be turned over to the landowner as payment of rent and expenses.  Perhaps one day they would truly have the financial resources to buy their freedom.

Ideologically, sharecropping should have been a truly symbiotic relationship.  However, the system was filled with abuses.  The sharecroppers who might not be able to afford the necessary seed or plants or supply themselves with the necessary tools to work the land could have been subsidized by another source.  Taking this into account, sharecroppers were forced to look to the most obvious source to alleviate these deficient resources.   Naturally, this would be the landowners.  As a result, the bulk of the farmers’ labor went to satisfy debt to the landowners.

This indebtedness was a direct result of the failure of the idealism of the day. What was initially designed to alleviate potential monetary disaster when a huge number of freedmen were added into the new societal equation simply became a way for the status quo to remain intact:  those who have protect their property from those who have not.

In such a relationship, the sharecroppers found themselves in a never-ending cycle of indebtedness to the landowners. By the time the crop was brought in at the end of the growing season, the resulting sale would often fail to cover the debt the grower had incurred to date.  The cost of seed, the rent for equipment, and the often-unscrupulous accounting methods of the landowners became the tools of the status quo. No matter how determined a farmer might have been, the system was too strong.

This same system of unique indenture is experienced by many of today’s teachers in higher education.  They have their classrooms.  They have their students.  They definitely have their share of work.  Yet, they often feel, because of their position as adjuncts, that they must prove themselves beyond the accepted norm.  That is to say that in order to protect their own fragile positions, they must outperform the full-time faculty around them just to show their worthiness.  This struggle for acceptance is multiplied when one takes into account the fact that many of these adjunct members teach the equivalent of a full load and still maintain another job.  They are forced to maintain this other position because higher education has failed—like the Southern form of indenture—to provide the most important aspect of work.

In other words, the tools are in place, but the final reward is not theirs.  Though rent is not paid on the classroom and students are not purchased like seeds or plants, the structure of the system fails to provide for financial independence.  By the end of the educational “growing” season, adjunct faculty find themselves searching for a monetary reward that is simply not there because they are paid on a different scale  (around 50% less) than the full-time faculty.

Instead of receiving equal pay for equal work, educational sharecroppers are more likely faced with letters from their “landowners” stating that for some reason they had been overpaid and restitution will be necessary.  A small pot seems to get smaller.  The true winner is the landowner or, in the case of higher education, the system.

Like the agricultural counterpart of the past, the adjunct faculty member is often locked into his or her position.    And like the unique system of agriculture that came before, the greatest opponent met by these educational sharecroppers is the status quo.  In fact, adjunct faculty exist solely for the purpose of serving the status quo.  Their work simply serves to support the activities of the full-time faculty. Of course, this does not mean that the teachers—like the sharecroppers of the past—do not strive for perfection. In fact, they probably work harder.

Just like many farmers who joined the ranks of the sharecropper with blind hope and ambition, many teachers join the higher education system with the same aspirations.  They are full of purpose and are more than ready to spread their own version of the truth they see in their respective fields of study. 

Unfortunately, once the elation of acquiring a position has burned off, what could have been a truly symbiotic relationship simply turns into the same illusion of success sharecroppers of the post Civil War era had to face.  The abuses the system imposes begin to shine through.

First of all, despite the wise words of past advisors, educational sharecroppers realize that they are not too qualified for anything else.  Like the true sharecroppers, they have done nothing else and know nothing else.  The modern sharecroppers must teach just as the agricultural sharecroppers had to till the earth.  Unfortunately for the modern sharecroppers, competition is high and opportunity is limited. 

This serves the status quo quite well.  No negotiation is involved.  No perks are required to fill the position.  The old farmers had to either take the position or starve.  The same is true of the higher education sharecroppers.  They must take what is offered or starve creatively.

Also, once in the system they realize that they hold a position that, in their absence, could quite possibly be filled before the end of the day.  The educated are no longer the elite they once were.  Like their counterparts of a century ago, they, too, are becoming what many may call “a dime-a-dozen.”

So, it is clear there is no sense of idealism in modern higher education as far as we “sharecroppers” are concerned.  Realism is the name of the game. Yes, we are necessary to the system.  Yes, it would falter without us.  Yes, there is definitely a defect in the system.  However, it is clear that the status quo will win out.  Too many are comfortable with the way things are.  They may voice their distaste for the way things are or they may seek a culprit such as the ever-present financial problems of the state.  Yet their lack of concern for the adjunct faculty is ever present. 

Adjunct faculty members exist to serve the system.  They support the status quo.  They take the classes others refuse to teach or the classes that can save a few dollars by delaying the hiring a new full-time employee.  They have no real say, and no one is interested in what they have to say.  They exist because their love of learning and teaching has not and will not become a victim of the status quo (which protects many who have lost their love of teaching).  In a perfect world, true educators and the status quo would never be on the same playing field.  They haven’t the same thought processes or goals.  One exists to serve the man while the other exists to serve man.