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Fires In The Mirror Analysis

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Recommended: Race through a social construct is an incredibly powerful construct that plays the most major role in shaping identity

What do people see when they see someone. What do people see first. They see their skin not the person. How do people treat one another or view one another through their skin. People of today don’t get or want to understand we are all the same; we are all human. “In America, identity is always being negotiated” Anna Deavere Smith shows human interaction and strife among the black and jewish communities in Fires in the Mirror. The black community wasn’t just the African-Americans but the black culture as a whole which consisted of; Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, lastly Haiti. The jewish community the lubavitchers which are members of an Orthodox Jewish sect who left Europe in fear of Nazi’s genocide during World War Two. These two communities …show more content…

The Jewish community also suffered a loss in Crown Heights, but the media used that death to also make the Jewish community the attackers and not the victims. The death led to Norman Rosenbaum speaking about his brother’s death “The only miracle was/ was the only victim/ for being a jew with his life(Smith 94)”. Norman Rosenbaum lost someone because how people have portrayed the Jewish people as rich people who only cared about their own. The media made the Black community believe the Jewish did nothing to help Gavin Cato after that fatal car accident. The media also mad what was going on in Crown Heights seems like a war zone because one woman killed herself in “Pogroms” Reuven Ostrov stated” A found a Jewish man/His mother committed suicide/,she was terrified./she jumped out of the third floor/committed suicide(Smith 129-131)”. The media caused this woman to kill herself because of how they portrayed the riots happening in Crown Heights. The media threw what was happening outside out of proportion as something that would tear the city apart and cause people hurt one another, yet the news could have stopped all of this. How each community was viewed was taken too far out of line, and into something else it change the way people saw one …show more content…

The Jewish and Black community had a lot in common dealing with slavery and the holocaust, but the media changed them as people. The Black community knew the Jewish people have been in trouble as shown in “Near Enough to Reach” Letty Cottin Pogrebin states “Only Jews listen,/only Jews take Blacks/only Jews view Blacks as full human beings(Smith 50)”. The blacks know how Jewish people feel and how they were treated. The Jewish people know of the struggle and pain. Pogrebin also stated “I mean Jews and Blacks,/that’s manageable,/we’re near,/we’re still near enough to each other to reach(Smith 50)!” The Jewish and Black communities know what each of communities are going through they’ve both lost people, and they know what it feels like to be chastised by society because they’re”different” from other people in society. These two communities have suffered great loses in time and could relate to one another, but the media has divided them into two groups who should have joined them together. “In America, identity is always being negotiated”; people don’t know what true identity is or how to look at a person 's identity. Identity is how a person carries one’s self and how that person displays their characteristics and actions. Identity in America is seen as race and stereotypes and things people see on the news and media. No one in America knows what identity truly means or

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