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“The Color of Water” by James McBride is a memoir about him and his mother’s life. In the 1960’s it was strenuously being white living in the South. James was always misled how his mother was white and he was black. For example, in chapter 2 of “The Color of Water” it explains about how James is questioning Ruth’s appearance. “ One afternoon as we walked home from the bus stop, I asked Mommy why she didn’t look like the other mothers. “ Because I’m not them,” she said. “Who are you?” I asked. “I’m your mother.” “…How come you don’t look like me?” She sighed and shrugged. She’d obviously been down this road many times.” (McBride12). This quote clarifies when he was younger; he acknowledged the fact that he was different in terms of color. Even
now he is still bewildered in consideration of his skin completion. Given the fact that Ruth put James and his siblings in white elementary schools and were the only ones that stuck out. Many kids made fun of him and his siblings. All of them toughed up and defended themselves while James was too scared to.
Questioning looks, dirty gazes, and the snide babbles were all too accustomed to Ruth McBride, when she walked down the street with her tow of children. James McBribe, one of the dozen children from her two elopements, was often ashamed as well as scared. They had to prolong the worse racial monikers. His mother, who was white, maintained unattended, “Whenever she stepped out of the house with us she went into a somewhat mental zone where her attention span went no farther than the five kids trailing her,” McBride subsequently wrote “My mom had absolutely no interest in a world that seemed incredulously agitated by our presence. The remarks and stares that we heard as we walked about the world went right over our head.” Her indomitable spirit and her son’s recollections became the basis of “The Color of Water”. In the work there is a great presence of God and the fortitude he unconditionally sends, especially to Ruth. Although Ruth’s clout frequently surpassed her circadian problems, she would more regularly rely on God for her vigor.
Throughout the article, the author uses the first person view to illustrate her main idea. For example, in the first paragraph she says “I learned that despite our differences in size, shape and color, we humans are 99.9 percent the same”. Here she uses the first person point of view to show her belief that people are different on the outside but inside they all are human, which is an example of expressive purpose. She says “I never noticed that my parents were different colors” and “I knew them as my parents before I saw them as people – before I perceived their skin color”. In this two quotes, the author expresses her feeling that although her parents are different in their skin colors she had never been racist or noticed that. The author sees her mother and father as her parents, their skin colors do not make them different to her. It is another characteristic of expressive
James McBride’s mother, like Tateh before her, clasps the values of education and religion close to her; according to McBride’s depiction in The Color of Water, she enforces them with an iron fist, instilling them in her children as Tateh did to her, Dee-Dee, and Sam, though more out of tough love than for pride. Despite carrying on Tateh’s materialistic tendencies, Ruth keeps the balance by inheriting his recognition of the predominance of education and religion over wealth in terms of resulting quality of life. Ruth’s and Tateh’s worldview is passed on from generation to generation, from parent to child, like all values, whether or not parent and child consent to the continuation of the morals’ journey through time.
McBride, James. The Color of Water: a Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother. New York: Riverhead, 1996. Print.
Everybody on earth faces some type of hardship at some point in their life. Regardless of religious preference most people seek guidance and find comfort through practicing their faith. This is exactly the case for Ruth McBride-Jordan, James McBride’s mother. In the novel The Color of Water, James sends the messages that a strong faith in God can overcome any obstacle and is the foundation for a happy, prosperous life through the story of his mother’s life.
When relating the history of her grandmother, Meema, for example, the author first depicts Meema’s sisters as “yellow” and Meema’s grandfather and his family as “white.” When the two families meet, the author has few words for their interactions, stating that their only form of recognition was “nodding at [them] as they met.” The lack of acknowledgment the narrator depicts in this scene, particularly between those of differing skin pigmentations, would indicate a racial divide permeating the society in which
In The Color of Water, author James McBride writes both his autobiography and a tribute to the life of his mother, Ruth McBride. In the memoirs of the author’s mother and of himself, they constantly face discrimination from their race in certain neighborhoods and of their religious beliefs. The trials and tribulations faced by these two characters have taught readers universally that everyone faces difficulties in life, but they can all be surmounted.
Janie’s first discovery about herself comes when she is a child. She is around the age of six when she realizes that she is colored. Janie’s confusion about her race is based on the reasoning that all her peers and the kids she grows up with are white. Janie and her Nanny live in the backyard of the white people that her Nanny works for. When Janie does not recognize herself on the picture that is taken by a photographer, the others find it funny and laughs, leaving Janie feeling humiliated. This racial discovery is not “social prejudice or personal meanness but affection” (Cooke 140). Janie is often teased at school because she lives with the white people and dresses better than the other colored kids. Even though the kids that tease her were all colored, this begins Janie’s experience to racial discrimination.
The father figure is now shown more as a responsible, loving, and moral person with more realistic faults. Color now seems, through evolution, to be taken out of the equation for the African-American television families.
She talked about how dangerous it could be for him to date white girls as he got older. How Stella could never understand Jordan fully. She then said “if she can’t use your comb don’t bring her home.” I, 11-year-old Whitney, was furious. How could my mother be so biased? How could she not see that there was so cute? It wasn’t until I was about 15 when it all made sense. I was learning about Emmet Till in school and I remarked how he looked like Jordan. Chubby cheeks and broad shoulders. So when I came home I knew a piece of what my mother was saying. IT can be unsafe for black boys to love white girls in public.
Pratt, R. A. (1992). In The Color of Their Skin: Eduation and Race in Richmond Virgina 1954 - 1989 (p. 4). Charlottesville: The University Press of Virigina.
I was late for school, and my father had to walk me in to class so that my teacher would know the reason for my tardiness. My dad opened the door to my classroom, and there was a hush of silence. Everyone's eyes were fixed on my father and me. He told the teacher why I was late, gave me a kiss goodbye and left for work. As I sat down at my seat, all of my so-called friends called me names and teased me. The students teased me not because I was late, but because my father was black. They were too young to understand. All of this time, they thought that I was white, because I had fare skin like them, therefore I had to be white. Growing up having a white mother and a black father was tough. To some people, being black and white is a contradiction in itself. People thought that I had to be one or the other, but not both. I thought that I was fine the way I was. But like myself, Shelby Steele was stuck in between two opposite forces of his double bind. He was black and middle class, both having significant roles in his life. "Race, he insisted, blurred class distinctions among blacks. If you were black, you were just black and that was that" (Steele 211).
This source goes generally explains the history of colorism and how it relates to slavery. It is relevant because it shows how black woman were sexually exploited by their slave masters. This unfortunate occurrence then is lead to the conception of a mixed race child. The subject of sexual exploitation goes hand and hand when talking about woman affected by colorism. Women of a darker skin tone are often perceived to be promiscuous, single mothers who have children with multiple men. Most would assume that the fathers of the children are not involved with in their lives; which is parallel to what occurred during slavery. During slavery, when the child was old enough, he or she was able to work and live in the slave masters house. These mixed race children were referred to “house Negros.” They were clothed, fed, and treated differently than slaves that did hard, physical labor in the fields. This can be compared to the treatment of people of color today. People of a lighter skin tone are thought to have more access to social opportunities than people of a darker skin tone. My mother is a figure in my life that has faced these social issues of sexual exploitation and discrimination as a black woman. She has had a career in a professional setting and although these statics that black women face are not in her favor she has still managed
The Ditch Diggers daughters were the best example to explain how people looked to them in a different way according to their skin color. Walking down the street and realizing how people’s thoughts are nothing but judgmental comments could weaken anyone mentally and physically. Yet they were able to stand out for their own self and understand that they have to try to be the best to get through this. Perhaps to stop people from having these thoughts about them and all the other races. Their father strengthened their way of getting through this by unexpected phrases such as “You’re black and you’re girls
If a person is taught they are bad based on the color of their skin that plays a significant role in how they see themselves. This is also true if you were never told that the color of your skin was an issue. When we got closer in our conversation to the 1960’s a time in which the civil rights movement was at full speed, her accounts seemed trivial at best. At first I thought maybe dementia may of the cause for this lack of recollection, however I know truly feel that this is the way it was in her eyes. She claimed to stay away from newspapers and they were too poor to own a TV or radio. When the civil right movement was at full steam and segregation was overturned, for her it was like a new family moved into the neighborhood. She said she began seeing them working at the mill, but for the most part nothing had changed. She held on to her claims that there was no difference to her. She more or less just saw “colored people” as she referred to them as new members of society she had never seen before. I think in her mind, there really wasn’t a difference; it all about what you believe, I