Am I A Share Cropper?

A practice that emerged following the emancipation of African-American slaves, sharecropping came to define the method of land lease that would eventually become a new form of slavery. Without land of their own, many blacks were drawn into schemes where they worked a portion of the land owned by whites for a share of the profit from the crops. They would get all the seeds, food, and equipment they needed from the company store, which allowed them to run a tab throughout the year and to settle up once the crops, usually cotton, were gathered. When accounting time came, the black farmer was always a few dollars short of what he owed the landowner, so he invariably began the new year with a deficit. As that deficit grew, he found it impossible to escape from his situation by legal means. The hard, back-breaking work led to stooped, physically destroyed, and mentally blighted black people who could seldom envision escape for themselves or their children; their lives were an endless round of poor diet, fickle weather, and the unbeatable figures at the company store. Those with courage to match their imaginations escaped under cover of darkness to the North, that fabled land of opportunity.

And then I began to think... am I a sharecropper? This deserved a closer analysis.

Share croppers spent all of their day cultivating and tending to land, that didn't belong to them with the hopes of being proud farm owner. I spend all of my day, working like a field hand, cultivating and tending to a company that made $2.5 billion dollars last year (and only has 13,000 employees) with the hopes of one day becoming one of the elite ones -- a $1,000,000+ partner. Share croppers, only got to keep a very miniscule portion of what they produced, while the land owners profited gluttonously from their tireless work. For the past few weeks, I have worked inexhaustible hours on a proposal for a $105 million dollar contract that I see less than 1% of... and then to add insult to injury, federal (and state) taxes defile me even further pushing me into the bowels of financial upheaval . And like the share croppers, I too always find myself a "few dollars short." As if that weren't debasement enough, I don't even own my mind at work! That's right! Yours truly signed over my mind and my company owns all of my work products and calls it "intellectual capital." I wonder if the sharecroppers got to retain their own farming methods...

Far too often I hear , "Crystal, you're only 23! You're much further along that I was at your age! Your hard work will pay off and you will have something to call your own!" But somewhere in my head I can hear land owners saying, "Big John, you were just a slave yesterday! You're much further along than your parents who got paid nothing for their labor! Your hard work will pay off and you too will have something to call your own..."

All of which makes me wonder, have we really progressed at all? Instead of working in fields, we work in air-conditioned, multi-tiered buildings. I was always taught that education was paramount in having a "better life." And yet, for about 10 hours a day, I don't even own the mind that I have yet to finish paying for! That's right, I signed my brain over to my company for the hours I work with them. Something called "intellectual capital."

I know progress is a slow process, but it would seem as though this new corporate share cropper is as sinister and inescapable as the share cropping my ancestors endured.