Identity In The Color Of Water By James Mcbride

While there can never be one single story, the memoir, The Color of Water by James McBride, shares the struggles of growing up as an African American in the 1960s and onward. This memoir is James’s tribute to his white mother Ruth, giving up her heritage and old life to marry a black man, and start a new family. He devotes himself to learning about his mother’s old life and true identity, and in the process gets closer to finding his own. Ruth put James in situations that not a lot of poor black kids were in back in that time, involving: race, religion, social location, and identity. These factors ultimately formed the way James thinks, and James as a man all together. James’s mother plays a paramount role towards James’s perspective on the

The schools in the area that James and his family lived in were far from Ruth’s minimum expectations, therefore none of the kids were sent there. James says “Mommy was for anything involving the improvement of our education and condition.” Ruth put hours of time getting her kids into better schools, eventually finding one for James, which was around a three and a half hour round trip. At this predominantly white school, James experienced discrimination, being stereotyped, and racism on a daily basis. James however, was not able to recognise what was happening to him, as his mother never talked about race with him. Ruth, being the only white person in the family, never wanted to speak of anything involving race, because it made her uncomfortable, even though it was a vital lesson for her children to learn. Instead of learning about racism from his mother, James had to learn it from experience. In an attempt to finally fit in and be liked, he gave in to the peer pressure formed by his classmates' stereotypes about him being able to dance, and tried it in front of his whole class. James’s recollection of this moment describes one of the first times when he recognizes what was really happening to him. “Happy to feel accepted, to