Strange Fruit — Revisited

Anastasia Prentiss Ph.D
Nov 7 · 3 min read
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I stand in front of them in my middle-aged, milk-white, copper speckled woman body.

We play a version of Strange Fruit in my classroom.

Billy Holiday howls exquisitely about the poplar trees bloodied and stained with our history of racialized hatred,

and I

wonder

I wonder

I wonder.

Does the echo of our shared ancestries re-traumatize the black bodies in the room?

The ripple of lives not lived

cut short by savage acts

of milk white-colored folks

the feeling passes like pulsing hands touching throughout the room.

Flinging their spirits backward in time to a place that no matter who I am, I am not a safe haven for them.

I am milk white-colored and dangerous.

The very act of educating feels like an invasion.

Breath stopped mid-prayer

In my classroom

The black male bodies in front of me

slouch down

look down

look away

and snicker.

And I

worry

I worry

I worry

I do not want to show these images,

strange fruit of appauling inhumanity — but the milk-colored folks need to SEE it — need to see what we have done and continue to do.

Look away

Beautiful black child look away

Look away — you have seen too much

I want to look away —

I am a perpetrator by association.

This hideous spectacle that milk colored people have created a sick and twisted circus of inhumanity.

The images are a clear reminder that their lives are fragile in white-dominated spaces.

A

Clear

Reminder

Your body is fragile in all spaces where skin and gendered bodies are labeled and categorized.

Your body marked for management by a foreign invading force.

Foreign

Invading force

A foreign invading force of milk-white bodies.

I think of the Black woman body

The lighter weight of her body — it would have taken longer —

not longer than the children.

The weight of them.

Poplar tree branches hanging low.

Strange Swollen fruit.

All blood runs red.

All blood runs red.

Blood

Red

People

Black people — beautiful people — shades of cinnamon, mahogany, chocolate, caramel an array of talents and gifts not offered for fear of violence.

We are retracing history in my classroom searching for something —

or is it the re-traumatizing of a nation in my classroom?

I cannot ignore what has happened.

The damage is done.

The scars.

The scars.

I do not feel guilt — I feel devastation.

There is no way I can — we can — ever make up for what our white ancestors have done. We milk white-colored people are still doing it.

What is IT?

You ask.

Murder, quick with a gun,

Slow death by devaluing the spirits of folks of color,

Swinging from popular culture

“I can’t breathe”

How many times will a black man have to say “I can’t breathe” before us milk-colored folks will cut down the noose, lay down the gun, unlock the cell

And fling open the doors of freedom and justice with our brothers and sisters?

How long will we seek to maintain an illusion of difference and domination?

Rise up, my brothers and sisters.

Rise Up.

Your silence is violence.

Enough.

Enough.

Enough fighting to maintain control of a dying way of life.

Redlining.

Credit denying,

Debt sinking.

Reality twisting.

“Hands up don’t shoot!”

There has never been a level playing field.

Even when we milk white-colored people try to — rake the ground — it is only more bodies we uncover.

I do

I do

I do feel guilt — deep guilt — white body guilt.

I am guilty. I am guilty. I am guilty.

I am ashamed -

I am horrified -

I am mortified —

I want to wipe the blood from my hands.

I want to wash away generations of complicacy.

I want to scrub the violence clean.

I will testify against myself if it would make it better. I will pull this history forward and compost it into a future when the strangest fruit on a tree

is a strawberry.

Anastasia Prentiss Ph.D

Written by

Just an urban mama, wife, professor, yogi and performer. I am teaching, dancing, cooking, crafting, gardening, playing, creating and loving this life every day.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade