Joey Cloudy online

Isaiah Jones vs the Sea: School Daze pt 1 : Strange Fruit Reprise:

Higher Education in the Age of American Exceptionalism; 

“Southern trees bear strange fruit 

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root 

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze 

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees” 

— Billie Holiday 

Penelope Stockard Bedowitz and Aeon Gabriella Zavala took their seats in the lecture hall of the University of San Diego. Aeon recommended she take the course with her since they had the slot open on both of their schedules. Penny already had her bachelors in international contract law and finance from SMU. 

After the trip to Galveston on Juneteenth Penny had come to realize that there were some glaring holes in her education. Even though she had been an A student and attended the finest prep schools in Beverly Hills, she realized she had learned a sort of whitewashed fiction in place of real history. Isaiah had always said he was setting sail from Galveston on his solo sail to Ghana because that’s where it all should have ended. She didn’t know enough history to understand the significance of what he was saying. 

That the reason there were no slave graveyards was because they were washed out to sea or the city built highways and high-rises on top of their graves. There are only a little more than 50k residents on the island today, but there were 250k (over a quarter of a million) black slaves on the island by the time the union troops returned to the island over a year after the civil war had ended. This place was populated by slaves for centuries before it ended. Penelope Bedowitz kept asking But where are the graves? 

If this had happened to white people here, there would be museum chapters in every history book, memorials, but it happened to black people, so we pretend we don’t see it and let time erase our crimes from the conscienceless of our collective history. Penny was born and raised in California her family had sent her to the most elite prep schools in Beverly Hills and even though she had a brush with the law and wasted a year of her life institutionalized as a teen she never dropped below a 4.0 GPA and aced her SATs yet even with all of that schooling she had never heard of Juneteenth before she moved to Dallas Texas 6 years ago and made friends with Isaiah Jones her junior year his first day on Campus as SMU. 

Sometimes, as she watched the overtly racist culture of Texas, she questioned the wisdom of attending school here. California was far from perfect but as bad as their neo nazi punk problem was it was nothing to the general level of acceptable casual racism in the Texas culture. 

Drive for 2o minutes in any direction, and as soon as you leave the city limits, it’s confederate battle flags everywhere. In the city the rich are just as bad they keep their confederate memorabilia in the Park City’s Neo-Georgian Antebellum mac-mansions study and a little sambo black faced lawn jockey and carbon colored Blackamoors in the front step. Sometimes, she wondered how her black friends kept from exploding with rage, but she always had a problem controlling her temper that was a luxury neither of them could afford. 

Izzy like his neighbor and best friend Aeon, never set foot in a public school before college. Aeon’s dad was Pinoy, and her mom was Afro-Dominican; they homeschooled Aeon after the first grade, she could teach portions of this class. They looked Professor Sisulu up online before enrolling; he had a 50 percent drop rate before the end of the semester. 

He was born is South Africa during Apartheid and fought the government as a member of the ANC/African National Congress as a young man. He later fled arrest by the Apartheid police for murder of several soldiers and police in an ANC ambush. After reaching England, he went on to study Philosophy and Political Science at Cambridge before moving to Minnesota, where he completed his doctorate program. 

The middle-aged, bespectacled Black man wore the same type of clothes every day. an old but well-maintained indigo 3-piece suit entered the classroom. He did not take a seat in the lecture hall but proceeded down the ramp to the lectern at the bottom of the ramp. He used an intricately carved African mahogany cane in his left hand and was pulling a small hematite-hued hard-shell Samsonite case filled with books for reference materials. he also brought a stack of transparencies and slides. He had watched a generation allowed to use calculators graduate, only to find them incapable of making change as cashiers when given coins to round out to the next dollar. 

Standing at 5 foot 7 inches, he hailed from Pretoria, South Africa, before traveling to London and then Minnesota for his university work and doctorate. Many students enrolled in his class to debate with him, believing they had discovered some unknown law of metaphysics with their questions. Of course, it was just more service to the status quo. He would follow the money, and they always ended up at the same place: the world bank and the International Monetary Fund, the global racketeers approved of by Western Europe and the US, whose interest they served exclusively. 

He would discuss the Pandora Papers, the secret economy, and the collapse of social services as the wealthiest citizens of the world hid their money in LLCs and offshore bank accounts to dodge paying taxes. Oh, goody, someone had already dug up that old war horse, Ronald Reagan. He took particular delight in skewering the old Hollywood phony. What was it with the Republican Party and entertainers elected to high office? First Bonzo’s co-star, then the Orange Nazi. Were the people who voted Republican really that stupid? He always thought so when he saw their candidates, and then they would elect Bush Jr. as if to shout in his ear with a bullhorn, “YES!” He would need to research the correlation between familiarity and electability. 

“The mind is a muscle,” he declared, “as far as the organ’s ability to grow stronger through work, repetition, rest, and more work, or atrophy—diminishing in strength and vigor like the shriveled stick legs of a paraplegic.” He looked up from the lectern. “Use it or lose it.” 

Look to your left, please. The students all looked left. Now, he ordered in his most serious tone Look to your right, please. Good, one of you will not be here by the end of the semester. 

That is how grades work. We judge. We assess. We measure. We quantify. Those found to be too weak to survive will die the death of an ill-formed Spartan babe. You will be cast out to crash upon the jagged stones of your own self-imposed ignorance. Every test will be given on paper, and you will handwrite your answers to the essay portions here in real time. 

If I hear a single electronic or digital beep in this room, you will automatically fail for the day. I do not come to your place of employment telling you how to fellatio your father, so do not disrespect this classroom with your phones or other digital toys. That being said, I confess that I did have a student with an alarm sound last semester who did not receive an F, but only because the alarm was for an insulin shot to keep her alive. I allowed it in this case, but only because I have found that it is very difficult to teach a corpse anything. 

The class all laughed nervously, not certain if he was serious. 

He set up his workstation, organized his materials, and logged onto the class with his laptop. The chalkboard behind him morphed into the image on his laptop screen; it was a virtual chalkboard—no actual chalk required. You could use your finger or a plastic stylus to write on it. 

I want you all to imagine you are out in the world a decade or two from today, and you are having a routine surgery done to say remove a benign mole on you neck and you see the doctor has his laptop out watching the video of the surgery he is about to perform on you. What do you do? How do you feel about having someone who never actually learned anything in medical school approach you with a scalpel and a smile? I am curious. I want 2 pages double-spaced at the start of class tomorrow. 

“I am 57 years old this year. I do 100 push-ups and sit-ups each day, as well as a dozen chin-ups. I swim and bike or jog for cardio three hours per week. There is no mind-body dichotomy. You cannot ignore one in service to the other.” 

The monitor displayed the loading screen of the National Photography Archives website, revealing the now-familiar black-and-white photograph used to sell post cards collected like baseball cards at the time depicted the black and white photograph of an anonymous Black family’s burnt corpses hanging by their necks over the collapsed remnants of a scorched wagon filled with their belongings. Beyond the initial horror of first glance was the realization that the two children were so small—no more than 7 or 8 years old at most. The tiny charred corpses hung from the leafless tree on the same limb that supported the weight of their mother and father’s dead, burnt bodies. 

After the Civil War, as newly freed Blacks tried to flee the South to escape the domestic terrorist organization the KKK and the entire white supremacist environment, they headed north and west. This, he said, pointing at the big screen with the tip of his cane -this is why there are still so many Blacks still trapped in the South to this day after the end of the Civil War; they could not leave after the Union troops departed. 

This same “I hate you, niggers, go away but not yet” would occur repeatedly throughout the history of Black peoples in the Americas. Marcus Garvey’s ‘Back to Africa’ movement was met with the same hostility. The wealthy elites learned to use the Negro as an economic and societal wedge to keep poor whites feeling invested in white supremacy. After all, they might be poor and uneducated, but at least they weren’t niggers. Thus, organized resistance by the white power structure arose at every Black call to leave the U.S. and the colonial territories. 

Professor Sisulu looked up from his notes as he spoke. “It’s almost as if it isn’t about their being there but about the Negro being under white control. Why else stop this obviously inferior race that has done nothing but slow down the progress of the great white race since emancipation?” He asked rhetorically, yet still glancing up to see if someone had an answer. 

Look closely at this photograph. Tell me anyone, what do you see? I will tell you what I see. I see a crime committed against a family that could have been anyone of our families. He sighed and frowned. Oh, I see you think that if you are white, this could not have anything to do with anyone in your family. I understand why you think that is true since these dead people are all black. However, that is not how genetics and DNA works. 

You see centuries of good white men systematically raping black women altered the genome of the enslaved African. Both men and women were routinely raped as a method of torture and just to satisfy the sextual urges of the good white men slave drivers. These good white men raped so many nigger women slaves for so many centuries filling their black wombs with hundreds of gallons of good white men’s jism that today the average African american regardless of appearance is at least 20 percent European ancestry. 

The fact of the matter is, all of those so called mulato children didn’t magically stop being related to you good white people because your great great great granny didn’t want to look a a little nigger child that bore an uncanny likeness to her husband, so that half white child was sold to a planation down the river. Thus the saying “Sold down the river” is born, no pun intended. 

But, here’s the thing: while good white people chose who to treat fairly based on their skin color, the truth is that biologically, you are related to those you enslaved at the genetic level. The African american is literally your kissing/raping cousin. Yet, I know of only two cases where a white person in america has pretended to be black outside of a minstrel show. 

But, good white people fake being native american so much they have a word for them “Pret-indians”. a long laugh echoed in the classroom, shared by those studying remotely. 

Indigenous peoples make up less than 2 percent of the US population, Jews just over 2 percent, whites 49 percent, Latinos nobody knows, and African americans 14 percent on the last census. Ask your self why pretend to have native blood and deny your very real negro relatives? 

These most racist good white people swear by family. Really? It is the negro male who abandons family and the white male that never fails his family hmmm, really, Thomas Jefferson never got the Jungle Fever? The Master of Monticello historically documented rapist of enslaved black women of what 13 or 14 at most when he starts in on his dead white wife’s mulato half-sister and favorite slave. Sally Hemmings might have a word to say about her six baby’s daddies. Founding Father indeed. he scoffed with a chuckle. 

And regardless of age all sex with a slave is rape in his case he happens to add pedophile to his sins. I am an old man; I have taught this subject for over a decade. but, if you have verifiable evidence of a superior learning method than my own, he waved his cane across the stand in an elegant yet exaggerated inviting gesture; the lectern is yours. I have never stopped being a student.” He grinned and wiped the sweat from his balding pate with a handkerchief as he began officially since, once again, no one stepped forward or approached the podium with a superior teaching method to his own. 

“Welcome to Decolonization 101. I will give you a few minutes to get settled in with your laptops and your snacks before we begin. I recommend that you take notes longhand for this class as well as any other lecture course; it helps improve retention by accessing the muscles used in handwriting along with the visuals and auditory stimuli and the video segments of the brain. Okay, with that, let us get begin.” 

“I am Professor Damian Iroko Sisulu, Doctorate in World History, and I minored in Economic Theory. I am a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seventeen books on the subjects we will be studying, but rest assured, we will not be using my books for this class because, besides being unethical, we will be going to the source for most of our research. So, what that means is if I see a single word from a Wiki page in anything you turn in for this class, you get an F on that assignment. 

I use AI to detect ghostwriting, so if you hire someone or use AI to write a single sentence in this class, you will be expelled from the university for life. I am here to teach you, and in order to do that, I need to see what you have learned. Having software do your work is like having a calculator do your work or giving open book tests, it is useless. You may as well be the same empty-headed nincompoops you were on the first day of class.” 

He looked at the faces of the students in the auditorium as they chuckled along with their virtual classmates. 

“Good morning, class. This is Pan-Afro History: Decolonization 101. If you have questions, submit them in writing, as most I have found are answered in the course of the lecture. And of course, since we are remote, if you all asked in real time, we would get nothing done. So, rest assured that any question found not covered in the lecture will be answered at the end of the class if relevant to the subject matter. Asking if there is a god or why the sky is blue is not within the purview of this class.” 

“This class will cover the effects on the diaspora in relation to the institutions of colonialism, capitalism, and the legal violence of the military-industrial complex: these institutions form the three-legged stool of white supremacy in global structures of power and control.” He stepped from behind the podium as you can see, he said opening his jacket pointing at his chest, suck as hard as you like these do not give milk. the class laughed. I am not here to coddle your white guilt, white tears, or white privilege. If you need to be mollycoddled, may I suggest you go home to suckle your mommies’ decorative only silicone-enhanced mammary glands? This is a college classroom; I am here to teach, and you are here to learn. 

Professor Sisulu looked at his class. Besides the 57 students in the lecture hall with him on campus, there were another 1.5 million students across the African continent, as well as in China, India, and various sectors of the Americas. 

He walked to the board and wrote in a beautiful script three words in quotes. “THIS IS SPARTA!” none of the students recognized the quote. They would be very familiar with Frank Miller by the time the class was over. They will have read everything he wrote from Sin City to Martha Washington Saves the World and ask themselves at the end how did these come from the same mind. 

“Today we will be dissecting the lie of the colorblind society and the post-racial illusion used to maintain the status quo of European white supremacy. We will begin with the Portuguese and the Spaniards, touch on the Middle East and the Arab states, as well as the United States. The only thing you really need to understand is that every conversation you have with these people is about white supremacy. 

I would suggest you watch the classic film ‘There Will Be Blood’ to understand the true nature of capitalism and the futility of dealing with people who are only looking for an opportunity to rob you. You will understand and write a paper explaining the quote ‘I drink your milkshake!’ in relation to Afro-European economics and the role of the World Bank in manipulating the economies and societies of the diaspora.” 

“All of this will lead up to the big paper on the history of the Dominican Republic and Haiti before we move to South America. We will also be touching on wage slavery—the people who imagine themselves to be free but do not have the money or means to leave their nation, yet they believe that they are free rather than free-range slaves. Like free-range chickens or cattle, they cannot actually leave the farm before being processed. Imagine working your entire life, never leaving your own country, never owning a passport; worse yet, being so ignorant you do not even know enough to want a passport.” 

“Okay,” Professor Sisulu said after the video presentation. “I see three relevant questions have been asked, so now I will ask that you take a 10-minute break to give me time to answer these excellent questions, then return, and we will begin the Q&A. Thanks, and see you in ten.” 

The three questions were: 

Is it true that the history of photography, as well as the science of color theory, have been warped by racism? 

Are medical data sets useless since they were gathered mostly in the early and middle 20th century using questionable data and only white American males enrolled in university for their sample population to test on? 

What is the difference between the slavery practiced by the Europeans and the slavery of the past as practiced in Africa on other Africans? 

Damien Sisulu loved the first day of school. They were asking relevant, interesting questions, and even the self-hating Negro in the group had a good question. It wasn’t the gotcha question that his kind thought it was, but you had to forgive his kind; he still was trapped in her slave mind. Viewing the world through the lens of how it benefits whites, whether in their colonies or in Europe, they thought all of the bad things that happened—like the racism and unfair treatment of people the color of their skin was an anomaly that could be fixed with respectability politics and being the exceptional token negro rather than a sign that the system was actually working as designed. 

He sang a little song to himself as he worked. 

“Southern trees bear strange fruit 

Blood on the leaves and blood at the root 

Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze 

Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees 

Pastoral scene of the gallant south 

The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth 

Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh 

Then the sudden smell of burning flesh 

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck 

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck 

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop 

Here is a strange and bitter crop.” 

-Billie Holiday ‘Strange Fruit’ 

[“The Yoruba people, who originate from southwestern Nigeria and the adjoining parts of Benin and Togo, believe that the Iroko tree is inhabited by a spirit called the Iroko-man. Anyone who stands face-to-face with the Iroko-man becomes insane and speedily dies, which is why the tree is so feared.”] 

About the author: 

JD Cloudy’s poetry has disappeared in the literary journals: Fatfizz, Mad Swirl, Texas Beat Anthology, Danse Macabre, Du Jour, and Death List Five. He has won no literary awards, entered no slam competitions, and never completed college. He lives to write in Dallas, Texas.