Pipeline

I had the pleasure of diving into ​Pipeline​ by Dominique Morisseau with my high school students as a way to diversify the curriculum and introduce them to playwrights of color. The play deals heavily with the school-to-prison pipeline, and how the extensive and aggressive policies and procedures heavily enforced in a school setting sends children of color - specifically Black students - down a dark path, with no means of escape.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline, In a Nutshell

It’s impossible to appreciate the honest truth that this play provides without understanding what the school to prison pipeline is, and how it’s enforced.

When discussing this in class, I told my students to envision any average pipe, and how the liquid is pushed down by pressure from an outside force. That’s what the school-to-prison pipeline is, in a nutshell. Depending on where you grew up, you may or may not be familiar with ‘zero-tolerance’ policies, or small actions that result in immediate detention or suspension (i.e. having your phone out, wearing hats indoors, etc.) Maybe you’ve had a heavy police presence at every entry way of your school building, or maybe you had metal detectors instead. If you’ve encountered any of this, then you have seen the pipeline in action. These exaggerated attempts to discipline children alternatively pushes them out of school. Think about it - a kid gets suspended multiple times for getting into a fight. After three suspensions, he gets expelled; because he’s expelled, this prevents him from getting his diploma. No diploma, little to no access to college. Without a college degree, it’s nearly impossible to get a job that sustains the cost of living. This can potentially force them to go to extremes to obtain necessities; theft, robbery, drugs, etc. If they get caught - prison. This is an extremely generic but unfortunately very common in underprivileged societies.

What we don’t talk about is the lineage of this pipeline. Those who are heavily impacted, usually don’t even know it. They’ve seen family members and friends go down this exact same road. It’s instilled in them from an early age that ‘this is how life is going to be.’ It’s a direct cause of fear, anxiety, stress, depression. Where children who reside in a more privileged part of town have the opportunity to tackle these emotions with a guidance counselor or therapist before it manifests into something greater and more dangerous, those in underserved communities are very rarely assisted in this way, if at all. They live their life on a battlefield every day, fighting to prove their worth. Pretending to be someone they’re not, because they never get the chance to explore their individuality and decide who they really are - not what their lineage and environment has made them to be.

Poetry in Motion

One of the many things that I love about Morisseau’s writing in this piece is the poetry in her language. Not merely the inclusion of the poem “We Real Cool” by Gwedolyn Brooks, although that’s incredible too, but I’m speaking of the words and phrases handcrafted by the playwright that delicately creates such vibrant and potent images in the brain. If we were still in the age of radio plays (let’s face it, that’s really what Clubhouse is anyway!), I promise you would not miss a beat of the action. Laurie is like a machine gun, always ready to explode. Jasmine is like a ‘metamorphic rock’ - ready to change with the slightest shift in heat and pressure. Omari is a ‘lunar eclipse’ - rare and always hiding from the Earth… ready to escape. So on and so forth. We see how the poetic nature of the text informs the essence of each character, and their relationships with each other. Does Laurie really understand Nya, or is her

machine-gun personality and ‘steel cut exterior’ too tough to get through? Does Nya hear Omari when he speaks, or does her fervent protection ​actually​ drown him out, thus continuing to push him further away from her and farther down that pipeline? The playwright’s use of vivid imagery and juicy descriptions discreetly envelops the unspoken truths of the educational system and how those in the lower economic classes are failed by it, and makes it slightly more palatable to the reader’s taste buds.

Strong Black Woman… Or Not?

Pipeline​ not only highlights the importance of acknowledging (and potentially dismantling) the existence of the school to prison pipeline, but it forces us to recognize the strength of a black woman on a day to day basis… or lack thereof. Something that isn’t talked about nearly enough is how the black woman is always depicted to be this pillar of strength, yet our society turns around and tears that pillar straight down. We expect black women to be the glue to all the world’s problems, but very rarely do we see someone picking up those pieces for us. How can we expect black women to succeed when the world is pitted against them, and every life connected to them? We see this manifest in Nya’s character. She is at her wits end - being a single mother, struggling to keep her son safe and in school, working to coparent with a man who wants almost nothing to do with her, all while having to find the will to get up every morning and inspire a classful of students. And if that’s not enough, we continue to watch her spiral as she waits to hear the repercussions of her son’s behavior. To them, he is just another number. A statistic. To her, he is everything and more. She has no choice to protect him, she’s all he’s got. But who protects the black woman while they protect everyone else?

When the Pipe Bursts

I had my students close their eyes again, and told them to think about any other pipelines they might find themselves to be a part of. Some said performing, and how there’s this unspoken rule that you have to go to one of the best colleges and live in debt just to get a piece of paper that claims you graduated, and struggle in New York City to *maybe* get a job on Broadway. Others spoke more directly about college debt, and how the college narrative is pushed down every high schoolers throats, but they’re never given adequate resources to overcome the financial burdens while applying, and especially after graduating. But hey, you went to college right?

Wrong.

My students closed their eyes once more, and envisioned the pipe once again. This time, I had them visualize what it would look like if the pipe burst. Split right in half, water flowing everywhere. What does that symbolize in your life? What pipelines are you trying to break out of, and how will you do it? I think that’s the question that we’re left with after reading this play. What will it take to reform the systems of this world, and are we willing to do it - if not for us, them for those after us?