“That’s America to Me”: How Orange is the New Black Portrays the Historic Pitting of Poor Americans Against Each Other
**Spoilers for last season of Orange is the New Black ahead**
Author’s note: I originally published this piece in March, around the time the world shut down due to the pandemic, which we are still in. It’s a piece I’m really proud of, so I decided to revisit it on the eve of the election, as I believe it is more relevant than ever.
“You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.”
— Tom Watson, a populist leader from Georgia, talking to a crowd of black and white laborers in 1892.
Quotes like this one reflect the historic but often overlooked connection between poor black and white people, particularly workers, in the United States. This pitting of black against white benefited only the (white) rich and powerful — slave owners, planters, heads of corporations. This mass manipulation continues even today, as the gap between the richest and everyone else grows bigger every year. A moving sequence from the second-to-last episode of Orange Is the New Black brilliantly reflects this manipulation as it currently stands in American life today. [Warning: Major Spoilers!]
To set the scene, Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett (Taryn Manning), a poor white woman from rural Virginia, has been trying to improve herself by earning her GED through the recently established education program started by the new but embattled warden. She has gone through her whole life thinking she is stupid because she has always had trouble reading, but she gets a glimmer of hope when her kindly teacher realizes that she is dyslexic, which should earn her more time on the GED exam. When the exam comes around, however, her teacher has run for the hills after refusing to participate in a drug scheme with some other prisoners, and the perennially lazy guard Luschek never turned in the paperwork so that Pennsatucky can have more time on the test. She is forced to take the exam with much less time than she was expecting and naturally panics. When time is called, she is seen hurriedly filling in the final circles on the Scantron sheet just so she has something written down. Assuming she has failed the test, she appears to have lost all hope and wanders into the laundry room, where the inmates who run the prison drug business have the stuff readily available. She and another inmate start on a bag of fentanyl.
Meanwhile, Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson (Danielle Brooks), a poor black woman from an inner city (not specified in the show), is also struggling. After being wrongfully convicted of murdering a guard (thanks to her former friend Cindy Hayes, who falsely implicated her), Taystee has tried to stay positive and upbeat, but she is at the end of her rope. Her breaking point comes when a promise of her case being reopened due to Suzanne’s (“Crazy Eyes”) (Uzo Aduba) notebook’s account of the incident is dashed. Taystee heads for the laundry room with drugs that she has been saving for the right moment, as she finally decides to end her life, just as Pennsatucky begins on her bag of drugs. As she takes what we assume is her final walk, Sam Cooke’s rendition of “The House I Live In” plays on the soundtrack. When she reaches the laundry room, however, the woman who had been taking drugs with Pennsatucky runs out, saying to Taystee, “You better get the fuck out of here.” Wondering what is going on, Taystee peers into the laundry room, where she sees a lifeless body lying on the floor. She rushes in to see who it is, and by her reaction we can see that it is Pennsatucky, who has tragically died of an overdose. Shocked and grief-stricken, she holds Pennsatucky’s body in her arms while she wails for help. Pennsatucky’s sudden death is particularly shocking for Taystee because Taystee had been Pennsatucky’s tutor for the GED. So while they weren’t exactly friends (as Taystee insists on in the next episode when talking with the warden Tamika), they did have some type of positive relationship.
At its core, this scene is tragic as it depicts two people who are broken and beaten down by life and by the system. But I have felt compelled to write about it to explore why I had such a strong reaction to it. There are various elements that make this scene so compelling, because it does such an eerily accurate job of depicting the grim but true reality of the America that exists today. This is true from the writing of the relationship between characters and plot to the music chosen. I certainly don’t know if the writers of this episode intended all of the messages I am suggesting here — I can only infer. But this well-crafted scene does a superb job of — simultaneously — illustrating a major plot point in the show and making a serious commentary on the unique, horrific nature of prisons in the United States of America.
Both Pennsatucky and Taystee, like most of the characters on this well-written show, have undergone many changes throughout its seven seasons. They are two of the original characters who have stayed in the main cast for the show’s duration (see linked bios/backstories for more info if you are not familiar with the show). Before the final season, however, they did not have much interaction with each other. These are also two people who never would have met if not for being in prison, but who actually have a lot more in common despite their seemingly very different backstories: while one is black from an urban area and one is white from a rural one, they both have the unfortunate distinction of being among the millions of poor people in America. The connection between poor blacks and poor whites in America, as well as the constant destruction of that connection by the upper classes for fear of a truly problematic uprising if the two groups were to join forces, is a historic one that goes back to this country’s founding.
A similar connection exists between the inmates and the guards who are pitted against each other but who are really all victims of the same sick, twisted system. We see an example of this when Dixon explains how he and Pennsatucky were friends, since he looked out for her protecting her from the predatory guard who raped her in an earlier season. Another example is how we learn that one of the female guards, CO McCullough, was sexually assaulted by a male member of her squad while serving in the military and was not taken seriously — and in fact discharged from the military — when she reported it. As anyone who has paid attention to recent news has likely heard, sexual assault in the military, of ordinary people just trying to serve their country, has been a rampant problem that has been swept under the rug for years. This is made more painful by the fact that many enter the military because they feel, due to their economic circumstances, that they have no other option, and are then subjected to this abuse. So while these characters may have their differences, whether racially or otherwise, they all end up being in the same boat.
Taystee’s yelling for help reflects all of these tensions. Besides the literal meaning of her call for help after she has found the lifeless, unresponsive Pennsatucky, there is the more existential one, which expresses the cry for help of the poor downtrodden who have essentially been forgotten behind bars. For the entire history of this country, the poor of all races have not only been left behind, but have been pitted against each other as the owners and upper classes continue to take advantage of them while they are distracted.
There is also another level to this tragedy for both of these characters who were struggling to seek redemption. Pennsatucky’s journey has met its sad, abrupt end, made worse by the fact that we (along with Taystee, her tutor) later find out that she had indeed passed the GED after all — making her death seem like even more of a tragic waste. Taystee, while still alive, has died a symbolic death in that she has come to the end of the road in fighting her trumped-up murder charge and now has to spend her life in prison. This “death” is illustrated by how her walk to the laundry room has a “Dead Man Walking” feel — and with Pennsatucky’s death, a part of her in a way does die.
This narrative is further amplified by the song playing in the background, Sam Cooke’s version of “The House I Live In.” Originally written for the Broadway revue Let Freedom Sing in 1942, the song became known when Frank Sinatra sang it in a short film of the same name, which was made to oppose anti-Semitism during World War II. “The song’s composer, Earl Robinson, had written campaign songs for FDR and other liberal politicians before being blacklisted as a Communist. A number of artists covered the song later on, including Cooke, Paul Robeson, and Mahalia Jackson. The lyrics portray an idyllic America that has been pushed as a narrative almost since the nation’s founding: celebrating democracy, friendly streets and neighborhoods, all races and religions living peacefully side by side. These images, of course, assume by default an America that is white, which adds a layer to them being sung by Cooke, a black singer who suffered from discrimination throughout his life and career. The words being sung during the climax of this scene both enhance the meaning of the scene and reflect the irony of Cooke singing the song:
The wedding and the churchyard
The laughter and the tears
The dream that’s been a growing
For a hundred and fifty years
For the scene itself, the telling of the hundred-fifty-year long American dream is cast in stark irony to two of its millions of victims: a poor black woman who has gone back and forth to prison through the all-too-familiar pipeline, and an equally poor white woman who fell victim to the epidemic of opioids ravaging much of the country. This from a song being sung by a black man who never got to fully participate in the very dream he’s singing about. In a beautiful coordination between sound and screen, the soaring strings end the song just as Cooke has sung the last line, “That’s America to me,” as Taystee has realized what has happened to Pennsatucky and can do nothing more than cradle her in her arms and wail for help, followed by the credits.
The last we see of Pennsatucky is her body being zipped up in a body bag and driven away from the prison in a medical examiner’s van. As the van drives off, we see her ghost standing outside, who waves goodbye to the prison as she finally leaves, free in spirit if not in body. While she was not always the most sympathetic character on the show, Pennsatucky certainly developed, evolved and matured over time, and by the end of the series was making a real effort to improve her lot in life. But as both her tragic death and Taystee’s unfortunate end show, these efforts were mostly futile, as one is dead and one is in prison for life.
The show does try to end Taystee’s story on a positive note by having her establish the Poussey Washington Fund in memory of her best friend. This fund will grant micro-loans to women newly released from prison, who often have no resources to get back on their feet once they are back in society. This gives Taystee something to live for, which she hasn’t had in quite a long time.
Taystee is making the best of her dire situation, to be sure, but she was still let down at every turn and never really had a chance. In a world that is dehumanizing people more and more, this show, and especially this scene, remind us of the very human elements at stake for the millions of men and women condemned to die behind bars, many of them undeservedly, today — and those who aren’t behind bars but are victims of the cruel system we are subjected to day after day, year after year, no matter who the president is.
