James is Ruth's son. He grew up in “orchestrated chaos” with his eleven sibling sin the poor, all-black projects of Red Hook, Brooklyn. By digging deep into his mothers past, and his own past, he hoped to find understanding of his racial, religious, and social identity. James was always embarrassed of his mother's whiteness, because it shows her differences from his peers and their parents. As James grew older, he began to accept his mother more easily.
The second portion of the chapter is McBride’s story, which includes both insight into his mother and also his mixed racial and cultural ways. He wrote The Color of Water in chronological order to enhance the reader’s awareness of McBride’s, his mother’s, and his family’s growth and development. The dedication of The Color of Water reads, “I wrote this book for my mother, and her mother, and mothers everywhere,”. Throughout, McBride shares how his unique mother faced many struggles throughout her life. Although she was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, she married a black man, and then went on the raise all her children as Christians.
Ruth's description of her childhood in Suffolk enables both James and the reader to understand how she decided to live her own life. Living among black people and interacting with them every day at the family store, she witnessed their lives and their struggles. She saw her father treat them badly, just as her father treated her badly. Her minority status as a Jew meant Ruth suffered from exclusion, prejudice, and hardship, although she points out that black people suffered greater degradation than Jewish people. Ruth resisted her father's racist beliefs, just as she resisted many aspects of her father's personality and his treatment of his
The two families only cared about the John of their own color it is like the other one did not exist. White people talked good about the black John until they found out he was trying to go to school they didn’t agree they said that it will ruin him. When black John finally returned home he was not the same as when he left he was now a different John who had learned new things. He had learned how the world works and he learned book knowledge only to be told that he could not use it because he was black. John ended up moving up North because he felt like he was being a
In prison when Malcolm begins to study the nation of Islam he says, “I have to admit a sad, shameful fact. I had so loved being around white man that in prison I really disliked how Negro convicts stuck together so much. But when Mr. Muhammad’s teachings reversed my attitude toward my black brothers, in my guilt and shame I began to catch every chance I could to recruit for Mr. Muhammad”(Malcolm X, 185). Malcolm is describing how his views about assimilation changed when he became a member of the nation of Islam. Before Malcolm believed that assimilation was the easiest way for black men to become free because he believed if he assimilated with white men he would be accepted into their society and as a result become free from racial prejudice.
During Lily’s first spiritual encounter, she reached out her hand to touch the black Mary, but August stopped playing the cello abruptly. Lily knew it was because of her color. In addition, Lily was being faced with racism from other white people in Tiburon. “‘You’re staying in her house?’ she said” (p.157). Miss Lacy, Clayton Forrest’s secretary was appalled at the thought of a white girl staying with black women, referring to August as her.
Percy Punter was twenty three years old and although Hurston loved Percy more than her previous husbands she refused to give up her writing for him. With all the love that she had for Percy she encompassed it instead used it to write “Their eyes were watching god.” On January 28, 1960 Hurston died of a stroke and was penniless only surviving through the great depression with the money she made from her novels and essays. Many whites authors and scholars rejected Hurston and in turn caused Hurston to die penniless, alone, her tombstone unmarked and was ever more criticized for her “anticommunist” essays and strong opposition on
During much of this time, Americans don't have much, but everyone has enough. The author alternates chapters on his mother’s life as a child, and his own life as a child. His white mother was born in Europe, emigrated to the U.S. and was raised in the Jewish faith. She later fell in love with a black man (forbidden to her family) and eventually embraced Christianity. She raised 12 black & mixed race children, but at times was so overwhelmed that the children raised themselves.
But if we think about it, without the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, things might have never of changed. African Americans could still be treated like slaves and not treated like human beings. America would still be a very segregated place. Freedom Summer was a very dark time in American history but all in all, America has turned out pretty good. It’s no doubt that America was not the most favorable place during this time period for most, if not all African Americans.
Before she thought that Atticus was different from the other fathers in Maycomb because he was too old and couldn’t do anything fun with them. After he killed the mad dog in one shot, Scout was proud of her father and got more influenced in him. Scout is forced to understand that Tom Robinson was being treated differently because he had colored skin. Because of that, Scout realized that people can be prejudice because her father took a case of an African American man who was innocent. It shows that Scout can actually think seriously about things when she says, “Who in this town did anything to help Tom Robinson, just who?”(215).