Owning a business seems like a lucrative way to earn income and build wealth. For some of us, however, trying to do this has not only left us in debt, but also repeating a horrific part of our history!
After enslavement, many hopeful Black farmers worked for rich white landowners, who loaned them what they needed to start farming businesses. Their debts would be taken out of their profits and eventually, they’d be free and clear as successful business people!
Sound familiar?
It should. It’s called sharecropping, and it rarely turned out how the white landowners promised. For Black chicken farmers today, it might as well be 200 years ago.
Small Black farms are signing contracts with huge chicken companies who provide everything they need to get started. But then the good parts of this arrangement fly the coop!
Just as farmers are about to pay off their debts and own their farms outright, the company owners force them to “upgrade,” placing them right back into debt. On top of that, the greedy white people shortchange farmers on supplies and other essentials. It’s modern-day sharecropping.
Black labor is STILL one of the most valuable things on Earth – and white companies will stop at nothing to keep exploiting us to make profits for them. This is why working together to create our own economies is a must!