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The color of water is important to the narrative of Mcbride’s The Color of Water because his mother’s narrative shows how water can be weaponized against any marginalized people, “When we’d go to the beach in Portsmouth, he’d get into the water with me, supposedly to teach me how to swim, and hold me real close to his body near his sexual parts and he’s have an erection.” (42) This quote is from Mcbride’s mother’s account of her childhood and the unfortunate events that transpired when trying to learn how to swim from her father. This narrative is remnant of Ruth’s story from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon where Ruth’s father began to creep into her bed and eventually left such a damaging scar to his daughter she remembers his love and embrace because of a watermark left on a dinner table.

This is important the color of water because it shows that water doesn’t have any real color just like as human beings. Humans separate each other by the color of skin and then assign a race to that color when we all boil down to being apart of the human race. Ruth and Mcbride’s mother are both women who come from different classes, race and politics, historically speaking, but both have a connection of water being a pivotal moment in their lives and water defining their moments of intimacy. When the color of water is clear/ transparent it can be used for cleansing and process of rejuvenation while unfortunately for both of these marginalized women, water became a weapon and a tool of manipulation to command control of their lives from their fathers.

The color of water is important because it shows how the struggles and oppositions of the African-American narrative can associate to issues other people in society deal with but won’t focus on because it’s a “black issue.”All three of these characteristics shows how others can transcends into an intersectionality of “black issues” so therefore it’s not just an issue “Georgia” has to deal with and “Atlanta” has no fault in it as well but it’s something that the entire human race has to overcome.