The Color of Water (Pgs. 107-168)

Summary:

In this part of The Color of Water, James discovers Jazz and embraces it to escape from race tensions. Ruth falls in love with a black boy, who seems to show great affection for her, by whom she becomes pregnant; she was reluctant to divulge her pregnancy to white folks. Her mother finds out of her pregnancy by finding her bracelet in her and Peter's secret hideout and is able to both keep it a secret and acknowledge Ruth's need to leave town for New York. The reasoning behind it being ideal to leave town, was because by being together, both the black man and white female's lives were on the line. James' biological father, Andrew McBride, had died when Ruth was still pregnant with James. Hunter Jordan became James' stepfather, and throughout the course of living on his own during the workweek, he would visit his family. He suffered from a stroke and upon recovery went to have a word with James, and advised him to take very good care of his mother and his brothers and sisters; he died shortly after that.

Quote:

"My new friends and I shoplifted. We broke into cars. We snuck onto the nearby Conrail/Long Island Rail Road tracks and broke into freight cars, robbing them of bicycles, television sets, and wine" (McBride 139).

Reaction:

This quote got my attention, because the behavior described in the quote does not correlate with Ruth's previous account of 'most' blacks. Ruth says that she liked her black friends because they did not belittle her or ask her personal background questions. She had said that the negative images of black boys portrayed on TV weren't the majority. She said that most blacks are peaceful and trusting, as opposed to being stupid murderers with guns, and that was why they were made a fool of so easily. At one point Ruth has to give it serious though of whether to announce her affairs with a black man or not, in cynical hope of people to be rational and understand how kind and caring he was, according to her. The reality was, that something like that would never happen; they would not be accepted as a couple and a black man would not be accepted as her partner.