Throughout the novel, The Color of Water, James McBride searches for his identity as a black child who is raised by his white mother. Ever since he was a child, McBride was confused about who he was and why he and his twelve siblings looked different from their mother. He never knew his black father because he died before he was born and his step father, who was also black, lived in a different household. Whenever he questioned his mother, Ruth, about his race or her own background, she would be very elusive or vague. She would claim that they were part of the “human race”, that God did not see color, and that education was more important than skin color.

However, growing up in the 1960s, he witnessed the growing tensions between blacks and whites in his neighborhood, and her answers did not suffice. He noticed how many white people were afraid of black people, especially with the growing popularity of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, and that most of the heroes he learned about in...

(The entire section contains 2 answers and 869 words.)