The Foundation of Job in Black-Indigenous Families and the Great Resignation
The Great Resignation is a phenomenon that is happening across the world as many Americans begin to create a life for themselves outside of the workforce. However, when recalling the history of the black American experience with jobs, I can’t quite ignore the significance of jobs in the Black American household.
Black American wealth and development began as working for nothing- as slaves. There once was a time-for Black Americans- when providing for the family was not accessible. It was a fairytale, a dream, and an implausible, impossible reality to think of having the opportunity to even hold money or to have a home of your own for your family.
As laws changed in the 1870s, sharecropping dominated the south. This means for the Black indigenous family, your resources were distributed through your direct labor by the White plantation owners you were sold to. There were no freedoms in choices of food or the job, the actual handling of money, the number of hours worked, and most importantly, the opportunity to evolve beyond being funded directly by The White Man. It wasn’t until the late 1960s, 90 years later, that sharecropping was made illegal by the Fair Housing Act. By that time, several generations were raised without the opportunity to gain wealth, obtain money and have the freedom America was founded upon.
In my own family, my great-grandmother and grandfather were the first to move our family from The White Man’s plantation. My grandmother can recall, as a young child, The White Man riding on his horse with a whip giving orders and handing out tickets for meals, which were to receive bread, meat scraps, and water.
My black-indigenous great-grandmother and grandfather were the first to get paid directly for their labor as they moved their family from the plantation. The dangerous and low-wage jobs they were accepted into funded the opportunities for their daughters, my grandmother, and her sisters, to get an education, which would then allow them the monetary access to have a better life, to be free. In 1971, my father was born on off-plantation. He and his mother worked several jobs to receive money and fund his professional education, not to mention the systematic obstacles that made this pursuit nearly impossible.
To the Black American Family, to work means to be free; to have the opportunity to live your own life and evolve beyond the limitations that were imposed onto us. To older generations, the Great Resignation can easily be seen as an act of rebellion against the exact system that gave you the freedom to live, learn, build, and create your own wealth and legacy.
Today, we’ve come a long way from sharecropping. However, I agree with the movement towards a life outside of the system, a life of true freedom. Our generation is acting on the beliefs of the capitalistic society and its 40-hour work week is a similar act to sharecropping. We watched our mothers and fathers work to live, just as our mothers and fathers watched their parents work to live. The system has created a cyclical act of slavery, one in which we’ve found a loophole out of.