For centuries, sugar and slavery went hand-in-hand. Black people hand-cut sugar across the Americas, including in Puerto Rico. Here's sugar's not-so-sweet role in fueling slavery, and the household brand still benefiting from it.
When Puerto Rico abolished slavery in 1873, the exploitative system continued as a dominant employer for the island's working class. By 1907, under U.S. rule, the American Sugar Refining Company, opened on the island. Today, that company, built on oppression, sits on our kitchen tables as Domino Sugar. There's more.
Some sugarcane cultivated in the South, the Caribbean, and in South America was turned into molasses and sent to Rhode Island, where it was distilled into rum. Then, colonists loaded oak barrels onto West Africa-bound ships. Once there, some companies traded the rum for human cargo that was sent across the Atlantic. The vicious cycle is known as the Triangular Trade.
"White gold," as sugar was called, made European countries, especially Britain, rich. Sugarcane harvesting was dangerous work that left some workers without hands or arms. Today, sugar continues to cause suffering in the Black community, where its consumption is disproportionately associated with obesity, cancer and diabetes.
Sugar's history reminds us that everything today's anti-Black world is intentionally built and maintained. These systems are deeper than racism, and when we understand the insidious ways that power works, we can recognize it, strategize to outsmart it, and stay focused on our liberation.