Slave ships were known for their terrible conditions. Kidnapped Africans were packed into the underdeck, which were rife with bodily waste, disease, and one particularly unwelcome addition: cockroaches.
The insects, native to West Africa, stowed away aboard the ships and became just as much a part of the Triangular Trade between the Americas, Africa, and England as rum, sugar, tobacco, and cotton were. While millions of our ancestors didn’t survive the treacherous ocean crossing, the cockroaches thrived in the humid wooden ships. And colonizers couldn’t stand them.
As soon as Africans were sold, they were associated with vermin and filth. After the Civil War, Black Americans were intentionally pushed into neighborhoods with the worst living conditions, including insect infestations. Cockroaches are linked to asthma, skin rashes, and bacterial infections. Here’s the common denominator.
In 2022, a mummified cockroach was discovered inside the ledger of an 18th-century slave-trading vessel that sailed from La Rochelle, France, to Guinea in 1743. The real cockroach? White supremacy. Like cockroaches, anti-Blackness is hard to kill. Coloniality has shaped our worldview for centuries.
When it comes to the hidden powers at play in our lives, nothing is a coincidence. Let this little-known connection encourage you to look below the surface. When we understand how coloniality still pervades daily life, we can begin to release all that was never ours to carry.