'Nana's cookies are racist'! With the NYT and the 1619 Project's help, hopefully Americans can atone for the lasting sin of 'sugar slavery'

Sarah D | 5:38 PM on August 21, 2019

Put down that Twinkie! Throw the rest of that cake in the trash! You don’t want to be a part of sugar’s shameful legacy, do you? Well, do you?

All we can say is, thank God for the New York Times and the 1619 Project:

The sugar that saturates the American diet has a barbaric history as the “white gold” that fueled slavery. “It was the introduction of sugar slavery in the New World that changed everything,” writes Khalil Gibran Muhammad for the #1619Project https://t.co/rtrualGdSA

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 21, 2019

In 1795, Étienne de Boré, a New Orleans sugar planter, granulated the first sugar crystals in the Louisiana Territory. Within 5 decades, Louisiana planters, using the labor of enslaved people, were producing a quarter of the world’s cane-sugar supply. https://t.co/HfOqaLtMZ2 pic.twitter.com/6GcmqiHJ3t

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 21, 2019

Louisiana led the U.S. in destroying the lives of black people in the name of economic efficiency. Life expectancy on its sugar plantations was similar to that of a Jamaican cane field, where the most overworked and abused could drop dead after 7 years. https://t.co/HfOqaLtMZ2 pic.twitter.com/fx9TjAJ4Uv

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 21, 2019

As recently as the 1940s, the United States Sugar Corporation was investigated and indicted for “carrying out a conspiracy to commit slavery,” wrote Alec Wilkinson in his 1989 book, "Big Sugar." The indictment was eventually quashed on procedural grounds. https://t.co/HfOqaLtMZ2

— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 21, 2019

Let the shame wash over you like molasses. Well, maybe not molasses. That stuff’s made from sugar, you know.