Sunday, October 19, 2008
Identity
In class, the book we are reading, Fires in the Mirror, is about racial and religious confrontations with two groups of people: Blacks and Jews. Identity has a large role in this book. In Crown Heights, where the events take place, Jews and Blacks live amongst each other and are "identified" by their race and/or religion. Is that O.K? To be judged by what you believe in or what the color of your skin is? In the book, a young black child is hit by a car and killed. The driver was a Jewish man. A few days later, another Jewish man was killed. So, the driver did a terrible thing, but an innocent man was killed because he was Jewish as well. Just because somebody does a bad thing doesn't mean that everybody who shares the same belief/race should be punished.
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3 comments:
I think this is a great post, and I absolutely think that of course there is something wrong with being judged for your skin color, race etc. I think it happens alot in our country and its a sad thing. Even in schools! For example: the "hug a jew day" or "punch an asian day" were aweful! Things like that just show how one piece of the world can judge people by the way they look or what they believe in. I think it shouldnt matter whether you're pink, purple, black or white!
I totally agree with you Maddie. I believe that it was terrible that an innocent child was killed because people assumed that all people of that religion were the same. I commonly see stereotyping in common day and most of what I hear is a generalization that is not true. I think that this is a major problem in our society and we need to stop it.
I remember in sex ed last year, we were asked to map out qualities/ personality traits we have and put them on a poster.On my project, I listed: "Musical, social, history-lover, procrastinator, sponteneous, etc."
Then our teacher asked us, "on your identity sheet, did any of you put your skin color, your country, or your sexual orientation?" No one raised their hand.
I thought that was really interesting how the issues above are a really big deal in our country, yet not a lot of people, at least no one in my class, thought their race or sexual orientation was significant enough to put on their project.
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