Law in Contemporary Society

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ColeRileySecondEssay 3 - 31 May 2023 - Main.ColeRiley
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Fort Exodus University: Sonder's Rebellion
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Fort Exodus University

 

a cultural epic by Cole Riley the abolitionist writer Plot summary and Review by Cole Riley the afro pessimistic critic

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Setting

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Excerpt

“Your honor may I proceed”
 
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The epic anthology series revolves around the intertwining lives of students at a fictional international black college, Fort Exodus University (The Fort), located on a tropical island in the middle of the Atlantic (canonically located at Cabo Verde). The fortress was converted into a college campus at the intersection of the Harlem Renaissance, the Back to Africa movement, and the creation of HBCUs in the 20s. The campus is funded by nations that participated in the transatlantic slave trade as a form of reparations. Each donates a percentage of its GDP to a tiny African island serving over 100,000 black students from across the world. America is the school's biggest funder and debtor. While constitutionally the school is not supposed to be swayed by any nation’s interest, America tends to ensure that its interests are being met. It is a global ivy mentioned in the same vein as Harvard and Oxford and graduates students who go on to be presidents, CEOs, and diplomats diversifying even the highest caste of the increasingly globalized world.
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“You may” she says without looking up from her paper.
 
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The school is what every American college campus wishes it was. Amazing facilities with the best teachers, more than enough housing, a beach and a drinking age of 18. It has every single grad program imaginable. Tuition is free*. Culturally it’s if New York was even more diverse but racially homogenous. There is no official language so it’s common for students to create their own pidgin language to communicate along with their high-tech translators. It is a campus of immigrants concentrated on a Westernized education hoping to make a change for their people but curiously always coming up short.
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“May it please the court. In the age of racial diversity and inclusion, the merits of HBCUs, like The Fort, continuing to serve a predominantly Black population is being called into question. Whether it satisfies strict scrutiny is the legal question - but the question in the court of public opinion is whether HBCUs prepare students for the real world. I am here to argue that they do…and that is exactly the problem. HBCUs (and education for Black students more generally) should not prepare students to assimilate into a status quo that violently opposes them - but it should give them the tools to dismantle it.”
 
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Characters

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The older black judge stares down at me. I know the look. It’s not disappointment, it’s disgust.
 
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There are over a hundred nuanced characters, each with their own beautifully crafted backstories told from their perspective. The author paints sonder (the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you) as a rebellion against the rampant individualism of capitalism. This is combined with the interconnected lives of the globally dispersed African groups creating an immersive experience where each character feels like a missing piece of a puzzle to another. They all must grapple with the fact that they are what WEB Dubois would call the talented tenth, but their talents integrate them into the empire rather than opposing it. To obtain liberation they have to give up the promise of their education. They question whether to give up a life of financial security and prosperity and higher social, economic, and political status to oppose the university which is teaching them to assimilate.
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“Counselor, aren’t we here for a legal question.” she scorns.
 
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Summary

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“The legal question would ask me to converge the educational interest of young black students, with the interest of the United States government. It happened with Brown and it got us nothing but segregated classrooms and a disciplinary gap. I won’t make that mistake again. “
 
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Despite its history, a black school, on an African island, which was helped founded by black luminaries, does not provide an education for black people. It is one that allows them to have equal opportunity in the machinery of oppression. To be black ceos who perpetuate slave wages, staunch capitalists, black attorney generals cops and judges, black faces defending the remnants of white supremacist institutions by disappearing black and brown communities, stem students helping create weapons for lockheed martin, helping arm the black senators, representatives, and presidents who use the weapons to defend an empire responsible for their oppression domestically and globally. These students stand to inherit the keys to the ruling class and will at some point need to fight against the university to defend their ideas of Panafricanism and liberation before facing down American imperialism. Children giving up a guaranteed comfortable life, attending the most prestigious school in the world, to fight for an idea.
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But you’ll lose the case. Son, you could be disbarred.
 
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Unlike other stories on progress and social justice, this story takes a more immediate approach. They fight the battles, create the cultures, and abolish the systems to achieve a liberated society. The story ends with an anarchy of the globally dispersed celebrating in the streets as for the first time in centuries, they've obtained an unambiguous victory. As if the promised land was on earth and thy kingdom come was not a line to be repeated but a mission to be completed.
 
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Review

This book is horrible. The racial reincarnation plot line spits in the face of the ancestors who fought for the progress we have made. By having souls like Martin Luther King and Harriet Tubman and other figures return as human beings who are anything but worthy of praise is disrespectful. The idea that change can be made quickly is ahistorical and such an approach would only further the burnout of activists who do not achieve immediate gratification in their work. There are too many perspectives for a coherent piece. It is too idealistic and the racial analysis is lukewarm at best. It is clear that the author who is educated by American higher education is only attempting to critique it because of a self-righteous desire to do public interest when loans put him in big law. Too many of these characters decide not to march in the footsteps of the people who came before them and because of it end up making mistakes that put us back more than push us forward.

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We may lose the case, sacrifice personal accolades, but we’ll win the war.
 
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But for what it is worth. I have never in my 23 years ever even imagined what the day would look like where black people win. The final scene where they party across continents for three months was a nice thought. But even fiction has some reality to it and there's nothing real about us ever making it to that day. Books like this, our history, they are supposed to paint a bleak outlook for our lives. this is just naive.
 
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Plot Summary

 
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The epic fantasy anthology series spans generations and the globe but centers the experience of people connected to Fort Exodus University. The Fort is a prestigious international Black school located on an African island in the Atlantic. It was created as a form of reparations by the Joint Atlantic Council in the 20s. Every country who participated in the slave trade donates a percentage of their GDP to this small island campus. The hope was that the investment would return dividends as the students would go on to repair the harms of the West legacy of slavery, apartheid, and colonization. It is an education “in it but not of it” as the university is free to decide “who teaches, what they teach, how they teach, and the makeup of the student body”. Despite this, the school's interests often converge with those of its biggest funder, America. Today, The Fort is a global ivy mentioned in the same vein as Oxford while graduating students who go on to be presidents, CEOs, and diplomats diversifying even the highest caste of the increasingly globalized world. It is a campus of immigrants concentrated on a Westernized education hoping to make a change for their people but curiously always coming up short despite their individual accomplishments. The story begins to pick up as students begin to examine the university in which they are being educated and furthermore, examine the world that the school is preparing them for. These students stand to inherit the keys to the ruling class just by simply being at the school. Their ideas of progress and liberation are fundamentally at odds with the university and the western nations that fund it. But would these children give up a guaranteed comfortable life, attending the most prestigious school in the world, to fight for an idea?
 
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Review

 
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I like this very much. Jorge Luis Borges first showed that it was better to write the review of the novel you had invented than to write the novel itself. He would very much have appreciated your approach. I can see two major lines of development possible, which you have already personified and disabled by the grace of your irony. So we should talk before I make the wrong suggestion.

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Put simply, this is not a compelling story. It fully encapsulates everything that is wrong with young people today. First, It imagines progress as something that can be done overnight, that change could be made quickly or within our lifetimes. Such an event has never happened over the course of the history of the diaspora. There have been great reforms followed by great retrenchment but never an unambiguous win. Popularizing such rhetoric would only further the burnout of activists who don’t receive immediate gratification. The author doesn’t even know his own history. It's almost as if he doesn’t believe what he was taught in American public schools. Young people engage in this practice of praising their ancestors, then saying that we have not come far, and refusing to reconcile the two. This book is riddled with this inconsistency as the stories of reincarnates are brought to the forefront. Second, it is highly elitist and wreaks of academia. The critical race theory, Derrick Bell, and legal concepts that he tries to weave into everyday stories does not make him sound profound but so deeply out of touch with the common man that he could not make a story that is relatable in the most basic sense. Finally, it is poorly written. This is not someone trained in the art of storytelling but a political scientist/lawyer trying to jump ship using whatever shred of talent he could muster as a flotation device. It is clear that the author who is educated by American higher education is only attempting to critique it because of a self-righteous desire to do public interest when loans put him in big law. Because I know the author personally I would emphasize that your life does not have any profound meaning or guidance for the entire diaspora. You went to an HBCU, and Ivy league, and lived in Puerto Rico, it is not hard to tell where you draw your inspiration. Nonetheless imagining the end goal of abolition as a fantasy does a supreme disservice to people actually doing the work. You’re just an academic. But for what it’s worth. I have never in my 23 years ever even imagined what the day would look like where Black people win. The final scene where they party across continents for three months was a nice thought. The dancing, the food, the tears of joy. For a story with a lackluster plot and an amateur critique of American higher ed, the ending did strike a nerve. But even fiction has some reality to it and there's nothing real about us ever making it to that day. Books like this, our history, are supposed to paint a bleak outlook for our lives. This is just disappointing.

Revision 3r3 - 31 May 2023 - 05:27:34 - ColeRiley
Revision 2r2 - 17 Apr 2023 - 18:52:11 - EbenMoglen
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