Every Snake Always thinks it’s Biting Into A Rat Until the Day It’s Biting Into a Mongoose.

I come from the Caribbean, a small region simmering in rich history, culture, calypso, reggae, and lessons from history. Being in small countries, we are familiar with our wildlife. Some are indigenous, but many were imported primarily by the Europeans when they first colonized. In our tropical world, a strange relationship exists between snakes and mongoose, which tells us more about human systems than you might expect. You may wonder, well, know who the snake, the rat, and the mongoose are.

European businesspeople brought the mongoose to the Caribbean during the era of enslavement, a time when white plantation owners prioritized profit over humanity. Even today, Africans from Africa who want to be malicious call us the sons of enslaved people, or mixed, as in mixed with white people, the latter of which some may actually envy, not thinking about the rape and unwelcomed attacks by someone who considers your livestock.

These tiny, fierce creatures were imported from India to rid the fields of our local snakes, which bit and endangered the enslaved people forced to harvest sugarcane. I can’t imagine doing that kind of back-breaking, sundrenched, sweat-soaking, body-bruising kind of work for free for anyone. Yet there they were.

The snakes posed a threat—not because the plantation owners cared about the health and well-being of the enslaved workers, but because snake bites slowed down the labor force, may kill or make ill a valuable enslaved person, cutting into delivery times and, ultimately, delay the delivery of the precious sweetening to the market demand for the European’s tea, coffee and cakes.

Let’s sit on our comfy couch and consider this for a moment: snakes and enslaved people were both expendable in the eyes of the plantation owners. But the mongoose, a clever, relentless predator, was their calculated solution to protect their investments. To me, the story about snakes and mongooses reflects an emblematic systemic disregard for the welfare of Black and Brown people, a pattern repeated throughout history.

We Live in A World of Disregard

Throughout history, Black and Brown lives have been treated as tools to fuel the ambitions of the powerful, whether it be on plantations, in factories, in fields, in music studios, in pharma labs, or —just anywhere. The systems built by colonizers and capitalists were never designed with our well-being in mind, not beyond the profits we can provide for them.

• The Atlantic Slave Trade: Millions of African people were kidnapped, sold as a commodity, and brutalized to build the wealth of Europe and the Americas. The only concern for their “well-being” was their ability to work. Sick or injured? Replace them with another body. Since the European migrants colonizing the West were no longer people from an origin country but declared themselves “white,” and everyone other non-white, non-Christian to be some weirdly made-up humanoid, they preferred to use them for labor, satisfy their sexual urges, and whatever depravity they could imagine. Have you ever watched 12 Years a Slave? Remember the hanging scene where Solomon Northup, played painfully convincing by Chiwetel Ejiofor? My God, the British director Steve McQueen made you watch while life went on as normal. Today, we see the suffering of brown and black people and often go on with our lives like normal. “Black Lives Matter” protests after the brutal murder of Black people only conjure “All Lives Matter,” knowing full well that “All Lives” are not in danger of white people murdering them. In early January, a white Virginia man was found with over 150 homemade bombs, some of which he had in a backpack with the hashtag #nolivesmatter. I will leave a link to his delightful story below.
• Indentured Labor and Colonialism: After emancipation, colonial powers replaced enslaved Africans with indentured laborers from India, China, and other parts of Asia, ensuring a continued flow of exploited labor. Their health and welfare mattered only as much as it impacted productivity. I put together a table summarizing the internment and discriminatory actions against various groups, including Asians and Mexicans. Sadly, these could happen again.
• The Industrial Revolution: In the 1800s and early 1900s, white industrialists relegated poor white people, Black and Brown people in America and other parts of the world, to the dirtiest, most dangerous, aka toxic jobs. Whether mining coal, laying railroad tracks, or picking cotton, their lives were considered disposable. They got wealthy. So, we have to thank such people for all the industrial luxuries we have today.
• Jim Crow and Redlining: Even after the emancipation of enslavement, legal barriers like segregation and housing bigotry ensured that Black Americans stayed on the margins of society, excluded from wealth-building prospects like homeownership and quality education. It’s ludicrous that the very law, Jim Crow, was named after a stage character played by a white man in blackface starting around the 1830s in their minstrelsy plays to showcase non-white people as fools and uncivilized. Often, they had no idea about how Black people really behaved when they were not around (and white people still don’t have a clue) because Black and Brown people always code-switch when they are around white people to ensure their safety. So, since they needed to dehumanize to subjugate, they made up shit, with their faces in black, not brown, but blackface.

The same logic that brought the mongoose to Caribbean plantations—to solve the problem in a way that maintains profits—policies that promote economic racism and white hoarding of resources far beyond their needs, and often that of generations to come, has driven countless policies and practices that treat Black and Brown people as expendable as a garbage bag.

Who Has a Mongoose Mentality?

There is a twist: the mongoose isn’t just a tool to protect profits; it’s a symbol of resistance. In the Caribbean, mongoose outsmarts their predators, turning the tables on those who underestimated them. Whiteness blinds people of all complexion. As black and brown people, we must be as resilient and cunning as the mongoose.

The systems of oppression that sought to exploit and discard us have repeatedly underestimated our resilience, ingenuity, and capacity for survival. Imagine what we go through on a daily basis: microaggressions, job losses, failed companies, disapproval for promotions, jobs, higher positions, and anything that a white person interprets as power. Yet, we are still here, many of us prospering, and many also fighting in their own ways.

From the Civil Rights Movement in the United States to the fight for independence across Africa and the Caribbean, or some African countries ejecting Europeans plundering resources without fair prices, we fight back. Black and Brown people have shown time and again that they are not rats to be devoured—they are mongooses capable of confronting and dismantling even the most vicious snakes.

Modern-Day Snakes (some white, but some Black, but white-believing) and Why We Need to Remain Vigilant

Today’s “snakes” may not always be as visible as the plantation overseers of the past, but they are just as dangerous to the welfare of the world.

• Mass Incarceration (mostly in private prisons): State policies like the War on Drugs were designed to disproportionately target poor whites (what the rich whites refer to as the underclass), black and brown communities, turning people into commodities for a prison-industrial complex that profits from their suffering. They focus on filling private prisons with new versions of enslaved people.
• Economic Inequity: As I have shown in many articles, the racial wealth gap continues to widen, fueled by discriminatory practices in housing, lending, and employment.
• Health Disparities: Black and Brown people encounter higher rates of diseases and inadequate access to quality healthcare, worsened by systemic neglect. Do we remember the COVID pandemic and how it revealed this fact?
• Educational Barriers: Underfunded schools and rising tuition costs keep many from achieving their full potential, perpetuating cycles of poverty. Now, fearing the educated enlightenment of their white children (many sensing this whiteness thing is a fraud), white mothers and fathers in conservative households are aiming to diminish the educational system even further.

These modern-day snakes slither through our lives, feeding on systemic inequities. But like mongooses, we have the power to resist and fight back.

Solutions

• We Must Educate Ourselves and Our Communities

This is a cliché worth repeating: knowledge is power. We must understand the systems at play and how they perpetuate inequality. I urge you to share this knowledge with your home, your community, your church, to build collective awareness and action. Don’t just keep it among black and brown people; share with open-minded white people because we need those with common sense who do not believe in the fantasy of whiteness promised them on the side of a just history for all of us.

• Support Grassroots Movements

The fight against economic injustice starts at the local level. Support organizations advocating for change, from community food banks to legal aid groups fighting for housing rights. It may not be money, but it could be your time or whatever skill you have to share. For some of us, it’s writing and disseminating information.

• Demand Policy Change

Advocate for policies that address systemic inequities, such as universal healthcare (please advocate for the protection of the Affordable Care Act), reparations, and criminal justice reform. Engage with your local representatives and hold them accountable. Write to and call them and say what you want.

• Invest in Future Generations

I support initiatives that uplift and empower the next generation, from mentorship programs to career day lectures to scholarships for underserved communities. I am always amazed at how a simple thing like visiting an underprivileged high school and talking to teenagers about what they could do with their lives brightens their faces and gives them hope they did not know existed.

• Stay Resilient and in Unity

Remember the power of the mongoose: it’s super clever, brave, and unyielding. Transformation doesn’t happen overnight, but through unity and determination, we can break apart even the most rooted systems of oppression. You have to be relentless!

Final Words

The plantation owners who brought Mongooses to the Caribbean thought only of their profits, not realizing the symbolism they were introducing. They expected to make profits easily and enjoy the resources they plunder unhindered, and they shored this up with false biblical stories that some white God ordained the world as such for them to reap the spoils of the earth and suffer everyone else. The mongoose reminds us that the exploited can become empowered and that those underestimated can rise to challenge even the most dangerous foes.

Every snake thinks it’s biting into a rat—until it bites into a mongoose. This reminds us that our resilience and strength are our greatest weapons. Together, we can fight against the systemic inequities that threaten to consume us, turning the tables on those who perpetuate them.

A List of Internments of Non-White Americans and Other People

Here is a Yahoo article about the #nolivesmatter Virginia White Man.

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