The Color of Water

Last week, the summer book group I'm in discussed The Color of Water. Unfortunately, I returned the book to the library before I wrote this review, so I can't give you any great quotes or anecdotal stories. But I'd read the book before, and the best recommendation I can give it, was that it is just as enjoyable the second time around.

James McBride is a black man raised in the '50s and '60s by his twice-widowed white Jewish mother. Most of his upbringing was in New York City, but his mother, father and beloved stepfather all hailed from the South. In his parents' generation in the South just to be seen together would have been illegal...if not suicidal.

James and his siblings search for where they belong...not quite in one world and definitely not in the other. Ruth, (his mother) preaches repeatedly to her children that education is the way out of poverty...and they learn the lesson well. Near the end of the book, McBride gives an accounting of all the accomplishments of his eleven brothers and sisters and himself. Ranging from professors to doctors and nurses to lawyers, each child more than fulfilled their mother's expectations.

What I kept thinking throughout the book was why does one family "pick themselves by their bootstraps" and not continue the cycle of poverty and millions of others are stuck there in perpetuity? The author himself gives one reason and I think his wisdom is wisdom that can come only from having walked the path himself. He points out that many of his African-American colleagues in journalism would sit around the newsroom talking about growing up poor in the "hood"...but he knew most of them had only been in such places behind the "doors of a locked Honda"...if ever. And he goes further to say that even he cannot claim a life as tough or as hollow as children of the '80s and '90s who no longer had any idea of what family, community or neighborhoods were like during his childhood. Their only resources are drugs, violence and never ending stress. This book was published in 1995 and in less than 20 years, the slide into urban decay and perpetuating an entitlement lifestyle have only worsened. 

Whom do we blame? Families, government, the Church, gangs, ourselves? You know what...I'm tired of all of the blame that is thrown around like yesterday's trash. What if we stopped looking for someone to blame and take a lesson from Ruth McBride, who instead started looking for a plan to provide a way out? Most of us will never know what it is like to be chased and threatened for daring to live out a love of a lifetime. Yet, she never looked to blame, rather she pitied ignorance and chose to challenge her children to live above it and instead choose Love, learning and life.