York, has an abortion, and finds that she prefers spending time around the black community there. She finds them more accepting and welcoming to her. Eventually, she marries her first husband.

James is, at times, embarrassed by his mother. He has to deal with issues of being a child with parents of different races, especially one who often doesn't have the financial resources to overcome systemic barriers. But he and his siblings take to heart the lessons taught by their parents and others and (aided by their own personal drives) are able to be successful.

Ruth sees people as beyond color as she ages. She won't admit to her children that she's white and says that God is the color of water. She wants them to see themselves as more than their racial identity, even if the great majority of the world will never be able to do so.

The conflicts in The Color of Water are different for each of the characters. Rachel’s main conflict comes out of her love for Peter. Peter is a black man while Rachel is white; at the time the story takes place blacks and whites were not even meant to be friends or even associates. Not only was their love for each other forbidden, Rachel becomes pregnant with Peter's child. A white woman being pregnant with the child of a black man could have gotten them both hung in the South at that time. Being pregnant and loving a man she should not even have a conversation with is the conflict that Rachel is faced with in the story. Sadly her story does not have a happy ending. Rachel’s mother finds out about the pregnancy. Her mother does not seem angered by this; in fact she sends Rachel to stay with her aunt in New York because they are more tolerant there. Rachel tells her aunt about the pregnancy as well, and her aunt has a drastically different approach to the situation as she procures an abortion for Rachel. After the abortion Rachel returns home only to find that Peter, the black man that she loved, had gotten another girl pregnant. As you can imagine she is depressed at the thought that he obviously did not love her as she thought, but she is also relieved because while her conflict was not resolved happily, it was resolved. 

James is another character to face a major conflict in his life. His conflict revolves around the choices he makes as he is growing up, and how making poor choices and falling in with a bad crowd can upset your life. In his story James drops out of school and starts hanging with some bad kids. At first the situation does not at seem so bad; they were just a bunch of kids smoking Marijuana, drinking, and listening to music. The situation changes quickly as he and his new group start robbing liquor stores and stealing women’s purses for money. James seems very much stuck in this circle of stealing and drinking until his mother is able to pull him out. When James’ mother finds out that he has not been attending school she sends him away to live with his sister. While living with his sister he meets the Chicken Man, who is able to help James change.

Because eNotes allows only one question per post, your other questions were edited out. James McBride's story The Color of Water relates his journey, partway through his life, to discover who he is and from where he came. To do that, he had to get his mother Ruth to reveal her past. The story is told in alternating chapters as each of them tells their stories.

James is a confused young man, and much of that is due to the confusion he senses in his mother. Ruth is Jewish and was born in Poland; her parents were not in love, and her father made it clear he only married his wife to get to America. He terrorized his family, but he was also a rabbi, albeit not a particularly good or godly one. He was a cruel man who sexually abused Ruth and wanted to marry her off for his own gain.

Because of all this, Ruth lived a life of conflict. She grows up ashamed of who she is until she finally finds acceptance and lives her life in the black community. Though it is a dangerous time for interratial relationships, during the course of her life Ruth marries two black, Christian men. She lives her entire life trying to deny her Jewish heritage and her race.

She never talks about being white, but everyone knows she is. She never talks about her Jewish heritage and actually adopts the Christian faith. She lives in a black community but sends her children to the best white schools, usually Jewish. The older children all seem to find a way to either ignore their mother's eccentricities and secrets or become outspoken proponents of the Civil Rights movement. James's life, however, reflects his mother's confusion and conflict.

Ruth's conflict is simple: she spends her entire adult life living a lie and denying the truth of her abusive, white, Jewish past. Only when Ruth helps James understand her past is he able to answer the questions and uncertainties which plagued him as a young man.

In The Color of Water, Ruth McBride-Jordan escapes from an abusive background by changing her culture, her religion, and even, as far as possible, her race. Her family was Jewish, and her father had hoped to become a rabbi, but by the time Ruth was a child, he had failed in this ambition and kept a store in Suffolk, Virginia. He became increasingly embittered and abusive in his behavior to Ruth and her mother, and Ruth fled to New York, where she married a Black man, converted to Christianity, and raised a large family, which eventually included twelve children. One of these was the author, James McBride.

When McBride was growing up, his mother appeared to be a light-skinned Black woman and a devout Christian, heavily involved with the church. It was the book that eventually became The Color of Water which finally moved Ruth to face and accept her past, when the author asked to interview her for it.

Slowly and reluctantly, Ruth began to collaborate with her son on the book. She talked about her childhood self as a separate person, but uncovered many memories she had never shared with anyone before. Eventually, the two of them returned to Ruth's childhood home in Suffolk, Virginia, which she had not seen for fifty years. There, Ruth found the address of a childhood friend in the library and reestablished contact with her, and she finally came to make peace with her troubled past.

Arguably the main conflict in the story is racial conflict. Ruth, a white Jewish woman, chooses to marry Peter, an African-American man, in defiance of her family's wishes. Ruth's family cannot accept her choice of husband, and they disown her immediately. Sadly, this was by no means an uncommon reaction at that time. In those days, people from different races weren't supposed to associate with each other, let alone fall in love and get married. Yet Ruth has made the brave decision to follow her heart, and she's determined to do so whatever society and her family may think.

James is conflicted in his identity. As the son of a white mother and an African-American father, he struggles to define himself racially. One of the ways he attempts to do this is by embracing the ideology of Black Power. At the same time, he's profoundly uneasy about the radical movement's consequences for his white mother. What part will she play in the racially-segregated society that forms the basis of the Black Power ideal?

In turn, James' conflict over his identity manifests itself in all kinds of bad behavior, such as skipping school, committing petty crimes, and hanging out with the wrong crowd. James' juvenile delinquency can be seen as his way of gaining street cred—a way of constructing his own identity as a child of the ghetto. In due course, James will have to realize that this identity is not who he really is. But before he reaches that moment of epiphany, he'll have to go through many more struggles with himself.