Reading for Racial Justice discussion

Though not quite as moving as Alexie Sherman's memoir of his mother, this book is a fitting tribute to McBride's mother. I like the way he alternates between his mother's words and memories and his own. And what a powerful story of overcoming difficulties and raising and interracial family.

The title comes from an exchange between a young James and his mother. "... one afternoon on the way home from church I asked her whether God was black or white. A deep sigh. "Oh boy ... God's not black. He's not white. He's a spirit." "Does he like black or white people better?" "He loves all people. He's a spirit." "What's a spirit?" "A spirit's a spirit." "What color is God's spirit?" "It doesn't have a color," she said. "God is the color of water. Water doesn't have a color." I could buy that ..." (p.39)

I loved this passage, as told in his father's words, about things past. "We talk about other times, other places, other persons, and lose our living hold on the present. Sometimes we think if we could just go back in time we would be happy. But anyone who attempts to reenter the past is sure to be disappointed. Anyone who has ever revisited the place of birth after years of absence is shocked by the differences between the way the place actually is, and the way he has remembered it. ... He has thought of this place as home, but he finds he is no longer here even in spirit. He has gone on to a new and different life, and in thinking longingly of the past, he has been giving thought and interest to something that no longer exists." (p.196) This really resonated with me, so true.

McBride talks about his mixed race status throughout the memoir, yet none as unique as this statement. "Being mixed is like the feeling you have in your nose just before you sneeze - you're waiting for it to happen but it never does. Given my black face and upbringing it was easy for me to flee into the anonymity of blackness, yet I felt frustrated to live in a world that considers the color of your face an immediate political statement." (p.205)

In talking about other black men who complain McBride says: "They were no closer to the black man in the ghetto than their white counterparts. They spoke of their days "growing up in Mississippi" or wherever it was as proof of their knowledge of poverty and blackness, but in fact the closest most of them had come to an urban ghetto in twenty years was behind the wheel of a locked Honda. Their claims of growing up poor were without merit in my mind. They grew up privileged, not deprived, because they had mothers, fathers, grandparents, neighbors, church, family, a system that protected, sheltered, and raised them." (p.207) McBride and his siblings, though very poor and growing up in a ghetto, has this system to protect them as well and all did very well because of their mother and her insistence on a good education.

It was not easy for the author to get his mother to tell her story. I loved and laughed at this passage at the end of the book: "After years of saying, "Don't tell my business," she reached a point where she now says, "It doesn't matter. They are all dead now, or in Florida," which in her mind was the same as being dead. "I'll never retire to Florida," she vowed. Riding past a graveyard one day, she looked over and remarked, "That's Florida Forever." (p.211) I mean really, what a great sense of humor!

So, well worth reading, an inspirational story! And how many other similar stories could be told!

Your comments and thoughts are most welcome!

I read that book, too, and really enjoyed it. What's remarkable is that McBride's mother did not like to admit she was white. She was a genuine "race traitor" who escaped being Jewish in an anti-Semitic town and married into a Black community.

Her story is a tiny bit similar to the white mother in a novel I recently read, Caucasia.

I hasten to add that McBride's mother was not trying to PASS as Black, unlike Rachel Dolezar or that professor (I can't remember her name) who pretended to be Black for professional advantage.