Summary Of ' Being The Token Negro

In chapter nine Ruth was discussing the type of schooling she had received as a child. In her small town they had three schools, each designated to a group; whites, blacks, and Jews. According to Ruth, “, “The Jewish school didn’t really count for the white folk’s so [she] attended the white school” (page 61).She

Ruth’s Jewish background, her conversion to Christianity, and James’ childhood influence James’ confusion with his identity. Ruth was born Jewish and lived her life experiencing multiple situations of discrimination growing up. Jews and Blacks were hated upon during that period and by her marrying a black man, it attracted even more discrimination towards her. James experienced discrimination when he was younger because he was black. James knows nothing about Ruth’s past because she had kept it a secret from him and his siblings since they were young. Ruth had taught them a mindset that is set to focus only on education and religion, not focusing on anything else so they couldn’t question other ideas Ruth did not want them to see. When Ruth was living in New York with her husband Andrew McBride, Ruth found out that her mother

“I Am Not Your Negro” displays the adversities that Black Americans face in American society.

* James notices that his mother’s skin color than his friends’ mothers’ skin color are different, so Ruth tells him “Who cares about your friends’ mothers’ skin color? Just educate your mind.”

In the Color of Water, Ruth Mcbride has an important significance, because her complex past is what propels the book. Without her, the book would not be nearly as interesting. James Mcbride, Ruth’s son and author of the book, portrays Ruth as a secretive, un maternal like, and spiritual woman. Ever since James was a child, he remembers his mother never mentioning her past or her racial identity. James notes:”She had a complete distrust authority and an insistence on complete privacy which seemed to make her and my family odder .... Matters involving race and identity she ignored (9) Ruth keeps her past hidden away from her children, so that she doesn’t have to relive painful memories or inquire her past. In doing so, Ruth also doesn’t label

“A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.”(137) Because of that day, the narrator made a decision that he felt was best for him at the time, which was to let the world make their own perception of him. “I argued that to forsake one’s race to better one’s condition was no less worthy an action than to forsake one’s country for the same purpose. I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with the label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.” (139)

There was only one good thing that Ruth took away from her father; She needed to be strict with her children about their education, but still loving at the same time. This parenting style became a part of Ruth, and shaped her identity of how to act as a mother and a member of society. Tateh was a terrible and hypocritical father, but he did help shape Ruth’s identity by showing her all of his flaws.

“I don’t want to get caught.” I called back. My friend Ian was a white, and the recent Jim Crow laws have outlawed almost every interaction between blacks and whites, so I don’t hang out with him much anymore. We used to be great friends and play sports in his huge yard, but now Jim Crow stole all our fun, and replaced it with beatings. My mother had always loved how I didn’t care about racial differences, but now being ignorant will get you jailed.

The first conflict is how Ruth and her children receives a lot of displeasure from their society. Ruth is a white women living in a black neighborhood, raising 12 children of the opposite race of her. She faces a lot of discrimination towards her and her children because she is a different race from them. “I could see it in the faces of the white people who stared at

The middle of the book takes more of a look of some of the prejudices that both Ruth and James went through during their upbringing. Ruth begins to talk about the difficulties that came with being Jewish and living in the South during that time period. She was always the target for mockery by her peers, but fortunately met a girl named Frances who truly accepted her for who she was. They would spend a lot of time together, most of the time at Frances’ house due Tateh’s discern for gentiles. James also faced similar prejudices at school. Since his mother put so much of an emphasis on schoolwork, James and all of his siblings would have to go to predominantly Jewish schools and were the objects of ridicule for the other students. There was one instance in particular in which James was asked by his classmates to dance because of a predisposed idea that because he was black he could dance. He danced for the class, but conflicting thoughts were rushing through his mind. He felt accepted by his peers, but also ashamed that he stooped so low to gain that acceptance. This example as well as other instances that occurred with his siblings showed the racial tensions that were filling the air at that time.

“I'm very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That's my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it's not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.” – Denzel Washington.

"Whenever I thought of the essential bleakness of black life in America, I knew that Negroes had never been allowed to catch the full spirit of Western civilization, that they lived somehow in it but not of it. And when I brooded upon the cultural barrenness of black life, I wondered if clean, positive tenderness, love, honor, loyalty, and the capacity to remember were native with man. I asked myself if these human qualities were not fostered, won, struggled and suffered for, preserved in ritual from one generation to another." This passage written in Black Boy, the autobiography of Richard Wright shows the disadvantages of Black people in the 1930's. A man of many words, Richard Wrights is the father of the modern

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to the sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal and whose feelings are all hurt about….No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife (“How it Feels to Be Colored Me”153).

Blow when he says, “ It is in these subtleties that black folks are forever forced to box with shadows, forever forced to recognize their otherness and their inability to simply blend.”

     "You're nobody, son.  You don't exist-can't you see that?  The white folk tell everybody what to think-except men like me.  I tell them: that's my life, telling white folk how to think about the things I know about....But I've made my place in it and I'll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am" (Ellison 143).