The Color Of Privacy Analysis

The Color of Privacy
James McBride’s stunning book tells the story of how his white mother was capable of successfully raising twelve black children. Coming from a Jewish, cruel, and dark past where her dad was not loving or caring towards her or her mother and sister, James’ mother, Ruth, finally opens up to his son after decades and decides to tell him the story of how she managed to run away from home, find happiness, and deal with strong emotions. Ruth lives through a lot of tragedies, sorrows, prohibitions, judgement, and little compassion or love. It was hard for her to manage with these feelings, yet she was able to find a-- successful but unhealthy-- coping mechanism: keeping her feelings to herself and keep her mind busy. She hid everything …show more content…
He notices how he does not like like his mother because of their skin color .He says “[he] was ashamed and didn’t want the world to see my white mother” (100). This is because he could not grasp why his mother was white and he was black and how they looked so different yet the world could not see that they were mother and son. He tries to ask Ruth why he looked so different from her, yet Ruth knows that questions goes far beyond her personal space and does not answer James in the correct manner to protect her privacy. He began making two completely worlds-- one with his white mother and the other one with his black friends-- where he was not able to even fit in one of them. He was either too dark or to light. He does not tell anyone about his white mother, and he would “avoid telling her where [his friends and him] were playing” (100), so then this way she could not find where he was and she would not be seen by his friends. He is keeping her mother secret to the world because he is too afraid to show his feelings towards his mother, since he knows that society would not accept to them as a family, and he would be ridiculized by his …show more content…
However he lacks on money, so he starts working for a white women, Mrs Dawson, who is willing to pay him for the trip and help him all the way through college. Later on, James finds a letter of her in the mailbox saying that her husband had passed away. Relating to the topic, some black students start to talk and one of them bluntly mentions that they should “Forget these whiteys. They’re all rich. They got no problems,” to which James answers with: “Yeah, man, I hear you,” “while inside [his] pocket was the folded letter holding the heartbroken words of an old white lady who had always gone out of her way to help [him]” (187). This is yet another example of how he hides an important event from people just to forget about the pain that it caused to hear what happened to Mrs. Dawson, and to fit in the little group of black men that worked for her at that time. He did not want them to know about him and how he appreciated and could understand the white man’s world that he knows about, since he has lived with a white woman. He later admits that “it hurt [him] a little to stand there and lie” (187), which demonstrates that he did have the intention to lie not say anything related to the matter just to protect himself and keeping his feelings separated from the real world. Once again, like he did with his mother when he was going through his punk phase,