James-+Overcoming+Challenges

James has several challenges he has to overcome in the novel Color of Water. As he overcomes each and every one of these challenges, James gains a new ethic or characteristic. This newly gained moral allow him to see the world in a new light and makes him humble for all he has in life. All these challenges and the way he overcomes them makes him the writer, reporter, and son he is today.

One of the first challenges James needs to overcome, and probably the most important, is moving past the mask he has created for himself. At a very young age, James found himself extremely dissatisfied with his life. He was caught between a mother who preached of race not being important and sibling who swore to black pride. James is so lost in it all he finds himself hating his life and to cover this hatred up, James creates a mask to hide behind. James tells readers, "To further escape from painful reality, I created an imaginary world for myself. I believed my true self was a boy who lived in the mirror." (90) As James grows older he only grows more confused and angrier. He continues to build up his mask by drinking, getting into drugs, dropping out of school and taking over the "bad boy" persona. James does not really realize how far he had strayed until his friend Chicken Man brings him into reality. He tells James, "Everybody on this corner is smart... if you so smart, why you gotta come on this corner every summer? Cause you flunkin school? They won’t beg your black ass to go back. You aint nobody! “(150) At this point James realizes he won't accomplish anything until he starts working again. He decides to go back to school and leave his mask behind. "I turned to god. I lay in bed at night praying to him to make me strong, to rid me of anger, to make me a man, and he listened, and I began to change. “(161) once James gets his life on track he opens himself up for bigger changes. James would have never been able to move forward until he realized he was holding himself back. ** + = **

This is similar to the main character from the movie Badger Vance. He tried to hide the guilt he felt from the war with drinking. He was never able to move forward with his life, forgiving himself and winning the national gulf title, until he learned to move past the mask he had created.

Once James is able to accept himself, he is able to accept his mother for being white. James tells readers,” The question of race was like the power of the moon in my house. It’s what made the rivers flow, the oceans swell, and the tides rise, but it was a silent power, intractable, indomitable, indisputable, and thus completely ignorable." (94) The more his mother avoided the question of race, the harder and harder it became for him to accept he difference of color. he tells us, "By age ten, I was coming into my own my own feelings about myself and my own impending manhood, and going out with mommy, which had been a privilege and a honor at age five, had become a dreaded event. I had reached the point where i was ashamed of her and didn't want the world to see my white mother." (pg 100) James stays resentful of his mother until college. He realizes as he is heading off, how much his mother really cares and does for him. She has sent him to college and pushes him to see the world while she gives up everything to see him off. It is at this point that James accepts his mother for how she treats him and what she does for them and not for the color of her skin. This is similar to the way lily learns to accept Zach in the book Secret Life of Bees. She falls in love with because of his morals and actions towards others, not because he is being black. Once she is able to move past this she is able to have a much stronger relationship with him. ........................................................................ ........................................... After James accepts the fact his mother is a different color than him, he is able to accept all races as equal. In his book, James talks about how all races seem to attack one another, making one seem more superior. James realizes, "I don't belong to any of those groups. I belong to the world of one god, one people. But as a kid, i preferred the black side." (104) He admits at one point in his life, he felt the black race was superior. Now he accepts the fact that we are all equal, all living under one force, and all accountable for the same world. Father James Groppi had the same attitude when it came to his civil rights movements. Groppi was a white preacher who put his difference in race aside to work for the common good. He worked with both black and white citizens for the creation of equal rights.