Preview

Racism

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
472 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Racism
Racism is like a box of crayons and not seeing all the colors. James and Ruth McBride were exposed to racism in similar and different ways.
The youth of James his mother and her abusive father, McBride identifies the racism of the South in 1940s. With mentions of his past he highlights the racial segregations in order to someone a more equal way of life. The racial segregation begins as he questions his identity wondering why his mom is white and he is black. When James goes to the bus to take him to summer camp and the kid shakes his father’s hand in a “hip” way and then says his dad is a Black Panther James yells for his mother then punches the other kid in the face which emphasizes his fear for his white mother’s safety due to his exposure of the Black Panther group being violent against whites. At the store James McBride buys a carton of milk, which turns out to be sour, but the merchant won’t take it back due to racism. This causes Ruth to get into a fight with the merchant and for James to continue to question society and racism.
The relationship between Peter and Ruth had to be held very secret because if anyone found out the white folks and her father would have disowned and beat Ruth and killed Peter. Back then if a black guy was seen looking at a women or been with a white women, the KKK or any white folk would tie the black men to a wagon, dragged around town and been tossed in a lake and left too die or until the crabs ate them. Ruth left Suffolk after her graduation. She moved to new York with her aunt Mary o work at her factory. She stayed with her grandma while she worked. After sometime she quit at the factory and went to Harlem to go look for a job as a ticket clerk or an usher at the time. she had no luck one manager from a movie theaters didn’t give her a job because she was WHITE. she looked all over Harlem and stopped at a barber shop and the store said "manicurist wanted". The owner gave a job immediately.
In some ways Ruth and James

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    James's and Ruth's love of the Christian faith also provide a backdrop to the memoir. Although Ruth's family raised her in the Orthodox Jewish tradition, she converted to Christianity after she met James's father Dennis, with whom she opened a church in the early 1950s. She raised all of her children as Christians, and took their involvement in church very seriously. Christianity is a powerful element of the book's context, as it gives Ruth and James comfort and guidance during times of…

    • 4966 Words
    • 20 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    McBride grew up in the Red Hook housing projects of Brooklyn confused by his mother's "whiteness". His confusion about his own racial identity later became the wellspring from which he pursued an understanding of his mother's…

    • 362 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mcbride recognizes how the contrasting cultures and beliefs that come with each group of people creates resentment between different peoples. McBride asserts that people hate those who are different from themselves primarily through the racism he depicts in The Color of Water. For instance, when McBride depicts how his mother, Ruth, raises him and his eleven other siblings, he depicts how Ruth is constantly abused and ridiculed by the black community. McBride argues how the black community loathes his mother due to the actuality that she was a white woman raising James and his mixed siblings.…

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    James’ mother’s experience in a public school is very similar to James’ but also has some differences. When James’ mother attended a public school she changed her name from Rachel to Ruth because it seemed less “Jewish”. Ruth was racially divided, with a all white school and a all black school. Ruth only made one friend, a girl named Frances. Ruth was very serious about getting her education. Ruth says, “You’re a human being...Educate yourself or you’ll be a nobody.. if you’re a nobody… It doesn’t matter what color you are”(Chapter 10). Ruth hated her father as a child, her father disliked black people so it seemed right for Ruth to marry a black man. Ruth ends up meeting a black man named peter and gets pregnant by him. Ruth’s experience…

    • 270 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The education of James Mcbride and Ruth have had a well education, has many similarities and differences. In their lives they both had to deal with racism or some sort of public hatred. Ruth who was a Jewish girl in the South was not accept by the other whites. at all times she could see people stare at her “with hate in their eyes” (McBride 80). Additionally, James was ridiculed for being black in a white school so much he often tried to “escape from painful reality” (90). At their schools, they are different from the majority and are hated for it. Neither were ever truly accepted by their peers. Secondly, they both have parents who pushed for them to have an education. Ruth’s parents and James’ mom, Ruth, “raised their children…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The story The Color of Water takes place in several different regions from Suffolk, Virginia to the city of Harlem, New York. James McBride is the author and it is an autobiography of his life, and his mother, Ruth. The story reveals James’ life with eleven other siblings, the hardship of being interracial, the struggles of poverty, and his mother’s strong character. Ruth’s strong determination led her twelve kids to become successful doctors, nurses, lawyers, musicians, poets, and most importantly parents. However, it was not easy being a single white mother of twelve interracial kids. She had an unwavering faith in God and strong moral convictions. To Ruth, issues of race and identity took secondary importance to moral beliefs. The story The Color of Water brings an interesting perspective and determination to the audience. The overall value of the story is important and relevant to know, that it does not matter where you come from nor the color of your skin, but what you do in this life that matters. James McBride had the inspiration to write this story as a tribute to his mother. He realized that his siblings nor him knew anything about his Ruth’s painful past. Therefore, she refused to discuss her painful reality at first, and then she caved. He began traveling and searching on a first-hand experience interviewing people from his mother’s past. The reason, why his mother did not agree with James’ idea is because she was not ready to confront her painful reality. However, James’ vision led to an amazing inspiring story about the life of his mother, and her twelve successful children.…

    • 304 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Life of James Mcbride

    • 1046 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the book, The Color of Water, by James McBride, a young colored man deals with growing up and having a white mother. James McBride always realized that his mother was different from his friends mothers, but he never understood why. He would always ask his mother why she was different but she would just reply that all people are the same. He never knew anything about the background of his mother because she never talked about it and he was afraid to ask. She would ride her old bicycle in an all black neighborhood that was run by the black panthers. James was scared for his mother because even though he was young at the time, he knew what was going on. I think that this book was an impressive view on how twelve young colored children reacted towards having a white mother during the civil rights movement.…

    • 1046 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Color of Water Analysis

    • 804 Words
    • 4 Pages

    By uncovering his mother’s past, James was able to build an even deeper relationship with her. While reading this book, it was hard to compare it to anything else because of its originality. A story about an old, white lady taking care of twelve black children; there is almost nothing like that! Although the concept of digging into someone’s past and in doing so gaining a deep respect for them comes close to the movie Hugo. Hugo is about an orphan boy who lives in the walls of a Paris railway station. As…

    • 804 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    I’m your mother” (13), she said that when asked by James why she didn’t look like him or anyone else in the family. Throughout her entire life Ruth never cared about what religion someone was or what the color of their skin was; all she cared about was what they were like as a person. This is shown when she falls in love for the first time and it is a black man. Even though Ruth knew her family wouldn’t approve of that she dated him anyways because he treated her nicely and he didn’t judge her. James never really had racism directed at him personally in the book but he was always conflicted with which side to take. As a child he believed that the Black Panthers were out to get his mom and that they were going to kill her. He was conflicted because all of his peers and neighbors seemed to support the Black Panthers but he thought that he couldn’t because he wanted his mother to be…

    • 817 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The color of water essay

    • 708 Words
    • 3 Pages

    James McBride was constantly looked down upon from the rest of society because he had a Jewish, white mother. When he went out with his mother, she was called a “nigger lover”. James did not understand what that meant when he was younger. He could never comprehend the color of his mother’s skin because she never admitted she was white until later in life. It was hard for James to figure out who he really was as a child. James went to a school with all white kids. The time period he lived in made it very hard to fit in as a black kid in a white school. African Americans were still being heavily discriminated against during the time period he lived in. As a child, James never understood why people hated his mother. Ruth would never give James an answer to most of his questions. James watched his mother get verbally abused by various people throughout his life.…

    • 708 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this memoir, James McBride where interviews his mother, Ruth, about her past. This memoir tells an intertwined story of James’ childhood and Ruth's life. While James’ stories were long ant told in detail; Ruth’s stories were short and blunt.…

    • 726 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Some people have to work tremendously hard to get by in life while others seem to have everything handed to them. James Healy, born as a slave, came from nothing. To make things more confusing, James was mixed race and didn’t look like either his white Irish father or his mulatto mother. Even though he was ¾ Irish because James had some “black blood” he was considered black, and a slave due to the one drop rule in Georgia (anyone with 1 drop of black blood, was black) (blackpast.org). “The rigidity of racial distinctions had to be maintained as much as possible. The idea that a person might be able to cross over from one race to another was out of the question....The distinction between "white blood" and "black blood" came to seem so fundamental…

    • 966 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Color of Water is the story of James McBride as he grows up and finds himself through his mother, Ruth McBride. He was born to a white mother, Ruth, and a black father, Andrew Dennis McBride, with seven older siblings, all black. His father died early on and his mother remarried another black man, Hunter Jordan, and had four more black children before his stepfather died as well, leaving him with a white mother and eleven black siblings, making Ruth McBride the only white in the house. This often raises questions in the McBride/Jordan household, but these are usually met with vague answers. “When I asked her where she was from, she would say ‘God made me,’ and change the subject. When I asked her if she was white, she’d…

    • 561 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Racism

    • 628 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time, we are the ones we’ve been waiting for, and we are the change that we seek.” Barack Obama’s entire presidency Obama has been helping America. On May 2nd 2011, Obama put an end to Osama Bin Laden. Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind behind the tragic 9/11 attack in 2001. That was one of Obama’s greatest achievements. Now Obama is running for president again and it would be a great idea for Obama to have a second term as president. In his ads to for president he uses three persuasive techniques, plain folk, name calling, and card stacking.…

    • 628 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Racial Discrimination

    • 1506 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Social dominance researched by Pratto points out the notion that hierarchies exist between groups in society, allowing some groups to have the dominance and power over others (Pratto 760). African Americans’ impoverishment and high crime rates have plagued society for years. The origin has a closely bound with the historical slavery and racial discrimination in the US, and drives question self to the problem at the first place. From the beginning of the 1960s, in order to ease ethnic tensions, U.S. federal government actively implements the "affirmative action" policies, trying to compensate for centuries’ persecution on blacks and other minorities and promote social justice and racial equality. William J. Wilson points out that the great movement achieved from the civil rights returns a rapid rise of the black middle class (Wilson 330). In study of the current poverty problems should mainly emphasize on class bias rather than color issue. The groups of underprivileged minorities who left behind in economic structure changes are now real disadvantages class in American society. But now many ask since affirmative action" has been introduced for several decades, why a considerable part of blacks still fall under the abyss of poverty and crime. That proves the mainly causes of discrimination are no longer the race or ethnicity, but the diversities between class and economical status. And high rates of crime among African American populations result not from inherent racial characteristics, but from economic inequality.…

    • 1506 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays