Prejudice And Racism In The Color Of Water

The Color of Water contributes to the readers’ understanding of the author’s subject, which is about racism. Through this book, the readers were able to see the struggle of being in a very strict Orthodox Jewish family and some of the struggles of being mixed. Although, it should be noted that this does not apply for all Orthodox Jewish families and mixed people, but does give insight to some of the possible struggles those people could go through. There were other struggles such as being a white woman in a black community during that time and being in an interracial marriage back in the 1940’s, but those weren’t as important to the story as the other issues. In Rachel’s family (not Ruth, because Ruth is no one to them while Rachel is the daughter who died), readers see that Ruth’s mom did not marry for love.

From there, it is a loveless marriage where her father constantly abused Ruth’s mom. Ruth’s father also ran a tight ship where while Ruth could come over to her one friend’s house, her friend could not come over to hers, because she was a gentile. Readers can see that Ruth knew what it was like“[…] when people laugh at you walking down the street, or snicker when they hear you speaking Yiddish, or just look at you with hate in their eyes” (80-1). With James, he grew up in a time where there was a lot of tension between white people and black people. He was afraid that “These people will kill Mommy” (27), with these people referring to the Black Panther, but at the same time, his older siblings supported black power. In the penultimate chapter of the book, James reflects on his life. He hated that his skin color seemed to determine everything about his identity in the eyes of the world. Yet, his mixed heritage allowed him to witness that black people as they proclaimed that white people had it