This essay explores the unique challenge the proliferation of adjunct labor in higher education poses to efforts at eliminating racial bias and promoting diversity in our field. Relying on published research and personal experience, I argue that the pervasive exploitation of contingent labor makes academic careers, particularly in far-flung fields such as Slavic studies, unattractive to many college graduates from the Black community, a large portion of which considers education a meritocratic means of escaping intergenerational poverty. Because the economic, social, and cultural inequalities at play in determining who obtains a tenure-track job fly in the face of this myth of meritocracy so fundamental to historic Black hopes for socioeconomic mobility, I call for a reckoning with adjunctification as a critical first step to addressing racial bias and ensuring inclusivity in our field.

中文翻译：

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偶然问题：斯拉夫研究领域中种族和阶级的反叙述

本文探讨了高等教育中辅助劳动力的扩散对消除种族偏见和促进我们领域多样性的努力所带来的独特挑战。依靠已发表的研究和个人经验，我认为对临时工的普遍剥削使得学术生涯，特别是在斯拉夫研究等偏远领域，对来自黑人社区的许多大学毕业生没有吸引力，其中很大一部分人认为教育是摆脱代际贫困的精英管理手段。因为在决定谁获得终身职位的过程中，经济、社会和文化的不平等与精英管理的神话背道而驰，这对于历史上黑人对社会经济流动性的希望至关重要，