He complies, and despite a performance that would have inspired jeers and ridicule from his Black peers, the White students believe he is the best dancer they’ve ever seen. In middle school and high school, White students literally ask James to dance for them, assuming he can move like James Brown simply because he is a person of color. James’s precarious tightrope walk between White and Black America continues. This panic culminates in an incident in which he punches the adolescent son of a Black Panther because he believes the boy’s father is going to try to kill Ruth. The Color of Water takes place on two parallel timelines. As he watches White newscasters incite panic over the supposed threat the Panthers pose to White America, James concludes that the Black Power movement must logically be a threat to his White mother.

The daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox rabbi, she was born Rachel Shilsky (actually Ruchel Dwara Zylska) in Poland on April 1, 1921. James is attracted to the fashion and iconography associated with the movement, but he is also susceptible to the media narrative about Black Power and its most visible and controversial auxiliary group, the Black Panthers. In The Color of Water, McBride retraces his mother's footsteps and, through her searing and spirited voice, recreates her remarkable story. In the 1960s, the emergence of the Black Power movement highlights James’s inability to know where and how he fits. As a child, James questions why he looks different from his mother.

The color of the water by james mcbride