Allan Punzalan Isaac Speaker Series

During Professor Isaac’s discussion of the short story “The Miracle Worker” by Mia Alvar, he said that “Race management precedes industrial management.” I thought that this phrase was highly relevant to our class when we talked about whether it was possible for capitalism to exist without racism. After reading Black Marxism, the general consensus was that the founding of capitalism was based upon the racial hierarchy that existed during feudalism. Later, Isaac brought up the capitalist idea of the disposability of laborers that was illustrated by the suicide of a Filipino domestic worker. At the funeral, there were no family members or loved ones present, only strangers. The total lack of sympathy for the plight of the domestic worker (who is almost invariably a woman of color) demonstrates how impersonal capitalism is. These women are treated as totally expendable; they are exploited for their labor and time and then simply discarded.