55 pages • 1 hour read
Anna Deavere SmithFires In The Mirror
Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1993A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Tools
BetaAct IV: “Race”Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Act IV, Scene 1 Summary: Angela Davis, “Rope”
The interview is conducted over the phone while Davis sits on her deck in her Oakland home. Davis speaks of the communal link that stood for many years between blacks in America: “As a child growing up in the South / my assumptions were / that if anybody in the race / came under attack / then I had to be there / to support that person, / to support the race” (27). Davis speaks of how things have changed, and how she, in 1970, could not have imagined opposing a blackcandidate—Clarence Thomas—to the Supreme Court. She speaks on how marginalized groups “have been able to turn / terrible acts of racism directed against us / into victory” (29), which she believes Anita Hill did and so Davis has no problem coming out against Thomas. Similarly, she also has no problem opposing Mike Tyson.
Davis speaks to the pseudoscience associated with race, and how racism needed to exist in order for race to be created. She argues that European colonialists, in an attempt to rationalize and justify their subjugation of other people, used false biological categorization to construct the idea of race: “If we don’t transform / this…this intransigent / rigid / notion of race, / we will be caught up in this cycle / of genocidal / violence / that, um, / is at the origins of our history” (31).
Davis speaks about a different kind of unity that she is working toward, one which will allow for solidarity. She uses the metaphor of the rope attached to the anchor of one’s own community: although the rope ties us to the anchor of this communal identity, it also allows freedom of movement to understand and learn from other communities. She believes that it is necessary to come together without “rendering invisible all of that heterogeneity” (32), which she is excited about because she believes it is happening now.
Act IV Analysis
In this act, Angela Davis discusses the history of blacks and whites as well as the need for unity through solidarity. Understanding the historical context for this act is integral in understanding the act itself. In her historical discussion, Davis talks about how Bush appointed Clarence Thomas—a black conservative accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill—to the Supreme Court. Thomas claimed that the harassment was fabricated by white liberals in an attempt to “lynch an uppity Black man”; Thomas was eventually confirmed as a Supreme Court judge, although many other women later came forward with claims of sexual harassment. Davis discusses the racism of the Senate hearings that were responsible for determining the validity of Hill’s accusations. She also references Mike Tyson’s arrest and subsequent conviction for rape after being accused of domestic abuse by ex-wife.
By referencing these current moments in history, she demonstrates that staying true to one’s communal identity does not require blind faith on the part of the individual in following and advocating for individuals who share this identity. Rather, Davis seems to believe that this blind support for one’s own community is problematic, as it denies choice associated with personal identity.
Davis also discusses the importance of connection and understanding in order to combat racism, focusing on the dynamism associated with communities. However, if communities can be dynamic, then it could follow that identities themselves are dynamic in nature. The excerpt makes it seem as though Davis is on the cusp of a socio-theoretical breakthrough in terms of understanding the relationship between communities and between personal and communal identities.
It is interesting that Smith does not offer a Jewish perspective as a balance to Davis’s perspective, much like she did not offer a black perspective on mirrors in response to Bernstein’s discussion. In this way, the two scenes mirror one another, just as “Hair” and “Identity” mirrored each other. Smith could be implying here that Davis’s understanding of history and race is as real as Bernstein’s understanding of the science behind mirrors, and is, therefore, open to less interpretation. Smith constructs these two ideas as kind of social counterbalances to one another, possibly suggesting that history and science reflect one another within the social mirror.
