The Color of Water by James McBride

The search for one's self relies heavily on knowing where you came from and the presence of family love, according to James McBride in his memoir The Color of Water. James McBride spent most of his childhood growing up in the Red Hook District of Brooklyn and is the eighth of twelve children. He received his bachelor's degree from Oberlin College and his master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. His memoir explores the struggle of discovering his true self as a person of mixed-race, his love and respect for his mother, his family history, and his realization that members of every race and religion go through hardships.

Ruth McBride's refusal to reveal her past may be viewed by some as a mother simply not wanting to re-visit those painful years, or that she had forgotten most of it since she had closed the door tightly upon it years ago. Ruth McBride describes herself as "dead" in the beginning of the book, and by this she means that the Jewish part of her life is completely dead in her and that she is considered "dead" to her Jewish family as well. Ruth McBride was an intelligent woman who most likely did not reveal her past to her children in an attempt to try to keep her family life clean of any room for racial or religious assumptions made by society that could be brought in by her children. Yet such large, mixed-race families as the McBride-Jordan family was unfamiliar to the public eye during the 20th century, and society judged the family wherever they went together, even if that judgment was subconscious. Since Ruth had past experiences of hatred towards her mixed-race marriage and family, she most likely realized that allowing her children from an early age to discover that their mother came from a white, Jewish family background would only damage them more. They would begin to listen to others' prejudices and assumptions on members of the Jewish faith, as well as judgments made upon African-Americans. Teaching her children that race and her personal past didn't matter was in effort to teach them that all people should be judged by their actions, morals, and ideas. That is why Ruth explained to James that he was the same hue as the "color of water;" water has no color, which means that he should view himself as having no color and identify with people regardless of what their skin looks like. In reality, Ruth's concealment of her past still did not stop her children from questioning their racial identity once they began to notice differences in their family's skin color. Most of her children struggled with this issue, and James, who strongly focused on the question of his racial identity, began to question his identity as a human being and his place in society. He recollects how in time, all of his mother's children began to slowly crack the wall their mother had set up between the family and society, James McBride states:
"We did not consider ourselves poor or deprived, or depressed, for the rules of the outside world seemed meaningless to us as children. But as we grew up and fanned out into the world as teenagers and college students, we brought the outside world home with us, and the world that Mommy had so painstakingly created began to fall apart." (McBride 95)

Ruth's children still had many life experiences, both good and bad, and many of her children identified with the African-American culture, because of their darker skin color. Although the author does not share if his siblings' stance on race changed, James does make it clear later in his memoir that as his life went on he was very grateful for being the child of a white, formerly Jewish mother and a black father because it allowed him to look at the members of different races and religions in a much more balanced light.

At one point in McBride's novel, he addresses views he observed from his mother as contradictions, such as:
"White folks, she felt were implicitly evil toward blacks, yet she forced us to go to white schools to get the best education. Blacks could be trusted more, but anything involving blacks was probably substandard...She was against welfare and never applied for it despite our need, but championed those who availed themselves of it."
Although these views confused James at a young age, they later taught him that white schools often have better education, because they have more sufficient funding, and that materialistically, what blacks had to offer was most likely substandard, because most did not have the money or privilege to have anything above that. This helped James have a more balanced view towards the world by understanding that outside and/or indirect racism affects many situations that he has no control over. That is why he was sent to white schools, and his mother refused to accept welfare, because she wanted to prove self-sufficiency and preserve pride. Emotionally, Ruth had to learn to become self-sufficient since birth since love was never concretely expressed within her family, and upon leaving Suffolk after high school and moving to New York, she quickly learned to develop self-sufficiency financially as well. With each name change Ruth went through in her past, she gained more control over her own life and moved farther away from her old one.
Ruth grew up in a very strict Orthodox Jewish household, and went thorough many hardships, such as watching her father's cruelty towards her mother in insults and apathy, his obsession with money, his affair with another woman, and his molestation of her as a child. Tateh ran his household like a cruel tyrant with no concern for anyone other than himself, and most of his family ended up running away or dying. Ruth ran her household with a firm hand but was successful in her child rearing because of how she organized a hierarchical family structure along with her family rules. Both Tateh and Ruth expected their children to follow all of their rules and had no tolerance for broken ones going unpunished, yet Ruth was successful because she did not emotionally abuse her family, and although she was the supreme ruler of the household, she allowed older siblings to have power over others when she was gone; this tactic allowed younger siblings to have a position of power to work up to and older siblings in charge to feel a sense of responsibility, but also pride of their power and mother's trust in them.

Learning more about his mother's past was what James McBride tried to ignore when possible when he was younger, and as he grew older he found himself running from many things, always feeling he had to discover himself by finding which was his stronger passion: writing or playing music. Once Ruth finally revealed the full story of her Jewish past to him, he was overwhelmed, yet did not feel the urge to run anymore. McBride had never truly known his mother, sure he knew her morals and limitations, but he never knew about her childhood, or even much of his father. With discovering Ruth's past, James felt a huge a shift in his sense of self and it heavily changed his perspective. He came to realize that everyone goes through similar struggles and experiences, regardless of their race or religion. The McBride-Jordan family thrived on love, the family never had a depletion of that essential element, although they were often lacking in other essentials of life, McBride develops a healthy attitude towards prejudices in his later years, realizing that love is the only thing that truly holds a family together, and that family love exists in every culture there is.

I felt that this book was very inspiring and would be beneficial to all readers to help educate themselves on the issue of racism and the journey of discovering who they truly are, and feeling satisfied with what they discover. For readers who enjoy this book, I recommend the Autobiography of Malcolm X.

- Anna L.

*Note: My block quotes would not show up on this type of document. They are still in my essay, just not correctly spaced on the blog.