The Role Of Interracial Marriage In The Color Of Water

Interracial marriage has traditionally been viewed as a means of expressing a hatred of oneself, of escaping something in one’s culture or self that one no longer wants to identify with. Jacki Thompson Rand describes the outcome of this phenomenon in an essay on her experience as the child of an interracial marriage. She explains how her mother married a white man in an effort to make herself more white, and therefore more legitimate: “My mother 's marriage to my father was a racial love

An interracial relationship is defined by the Webster dictionary as intimacies between two people of different races.

In The Color of Water by James McBride there are many conflicts that can be found involving Man vs Society. Throughout the book there is a lot of discrimination between the main characters and society that, Ruth and James both struggled with. Ruth grew up in a small town in Virginia learning the ways of an Orthodox Jew. She was not accepted by the society that she lived in, in her early life because she was Jewish. Ruth also had a lot of family problems that she escaped from when she moved to New York and converted to Christianity. Ruth ended up married to a black man named Dennis but once he died she remarried Hunter Jordan. Ruth was also not accepted by her society because she lived in Brooklyn raising 12 children of the opposite race as her. James is one of her sons and at one point in his life rebels against his society because he is upset about his stepfather’s death and doesn’t care about being successful. Throughout the book the conflict, Man vs. Society deals with a lot of racial discrimination. The society that James and Ruth are living in discriminate against their race, religion and decisions.

It was the interracial marriages which made many states change their legislation, lift bans on interracial marriages and made amendments to the existing laws by showing acceptability and leniency to interracial romance. There have been reported cases where individuals from different racial background got married and lost acceptance from both the social groups which made them suffer a great deal. However, over the period of time, their relationship gained acceptance.

In The Color of Water, James writes how his mother faced many hardships throughout her life. Ruth McBride Jordan, James’ mother, was a foreign immigrant who came from poland. As a young jewish girl, ruth faced many adversities throughout her early stages of life. The racism and racial prejudice really hit Ruth hard from the first moment she moved to the United States of America. Ruth is made fun of and shunned for being a small jewish girl in school. Also, ruth has seen the worst of racism through all the African Americans who visit her fathers store. She watched the Ku Klux Klan visit the ghetto towns of Virginia and terrorize the whole black community. Then later on in her life, Ruth is forced to run away to New York for an abortion after getting pregnant from her African American boyfriend whose life was in extreme danger during that period in time. Ruth then falls in love and marries Andrew Dennis McBride The only way for ruth to somewhat get away from racism is to leave the white world behind and adapt the the black world. She chose to do this because the white community was not pro interracial marriages at that time. Also, the black community did not judge Ruth and was very accepting of her, despite her being

Since the Loving V. Virginia case was settled in favor of Loving, interracial marriage became legal. Today more people are choosing to find their spouse outside of their race.

Some children have difficulties accepting their race. In “The Color of Water” written by James McBride covers the story of a biracial man that is trying to find out more about his white mother. Throughout the book James McBride discusses how racism and acceptance from people can be difficult. In the text “The Color of Water”, racial tensions has had an effect on James mother Ruth’s along with James and other individuals who have dealt with being biracial while looking to being accepted in their environment. The book uncovers how the main character Ruth, dealt with her negative memories of her past experience and how she was able to become a strong individual. In addition, in a Time magazine article “Intermarried..with Children,” by Jill

In May 2005 ‘Navigating Interracial Borders’ was published by Erica Chito Childs. The article offers a refined and understanding analysis of the social and political context of interracial relationships in America. Childs explores the world of interracial couples and examines the ways that group attitudes shape relationships. Using her own personal experiences, interviews, group responses, as well as media sources, she provides compelling evidence which verifies that disapproval still exists toward black/white unions. However it is merely being shown in a more subtle manor.

One aspect of Oralia’s life that struck me as quite different was her families quick acceptance of her future husband Julio Peralta. Based on history and individuals discussed throughout the course and Julio’s different background, I expected more opposition from her family. As we have seen throughout the course, acceptance of a spouse with a different look or complexion has not always been so easily accepted by families. For instance, we can again refer back to the case of Rachel in The Color of Water who was shunned by her family and even forgotten about due to her intimate relationships with African Americans throughout her life. Some could argue that perhaps Julio’s acceptance by Oralia’s Mother, Father, and family could have been due

there is the interracial marriage, which consists of a couple of different races getting married.

In Latin America and in the Caribbean colonist, later turned into nations, these interracial the native spouse could move one up in society. For example a member of the Indian nobility could get a higher place by marrying a white person. However in North America things were the opposite. Marriage between blacks and whites were extremely discouraged, and in some places illegal. In the whites eyes, to have been such a relationship would be seen as degrading and offered no mobility to the blacks.

These days, mixed-color families and couples are common. I have personally seen many cases. Interracial marriages happen everywhere. Even in Korea where people are proud of a five thousand year of history of homogeneous population, interracial marriages occur. What is the interracial marriage? It means marriage between different races that is a form of exogamy. The term of interracial marriage is synonymous with interethnic marriage,

The two articles used were “Understanding the Occurrence of Interracial Marriage in the United States through Differential Assimilation” (Lewis, Ford- Robinson, 2010) and “Marital Dissolution among Interracial Couples” (Zhang, Van Hook, 2009). The first article “Understanding the Occurrence of Interracial Marriage in the United States through Differential Assimilation”, spoke about the unprecedented changes that our society is going though in the 21st century.

Interracial Marriage In today's society interracial marriage is not something that many people oppose, but perhaps they encourage it. Interracial marriage is when two people from different racial or ethnic groups join in marriage. In the 19th century people did not marry outside of their own race. It was prohibited.

The success of an interracial marriage, to withstand all the prejudices in society, needs one major ingredient, and that is love. One of the hardest things an interracial couple has to deal with is acceptance from both their families and society. Interestingly, though, Interracial marriages tend to last longer than same race ones because people going into interracial marriages are prepared for a rocky road and are prepared to stick with it, while same race couples may have not experienced that same adversity, and at the first sign of struggle, back out of the marriage. This obviously tells us that whether the marriage is a success or not does not depend upon the races of the partners, or at least not in the way everyone thinks it does. It is obvious that people in general are becoming more open minded and accepting of interracial marriages, however, there still are many social taboos that prevent people from being in such a marriage. Society tends to concentrate on skin color when