What effect did James’s successful quest to learn his mother’s history have on both himself and his mother?

Coming from a mixed-race background, James never feels quite at home with himself. He relates more to blacks because he looks more like them, but he knows that he's half white, half from his mother, whom he adores and depends on. To add to his racial identity crisis, James attends schools where the children are predominantly white and Jewish. He is something of a spectacle at school, and the children expect him to be things that he's not; for example, they expect him to be a good dancer because of the color of his skin. Sometimes he pretends to be what they expect of him just to please them.

Ruth also deals with racial identity problems. She was born Jewish but converted to Christianity early in her adulthood. She married two black men and had twelve black children. She lived in black neighborhoods and had black friends, but she didn't look like any of the people who were close to her. James commented more than once that she would have been more comfortable in black skin, and he, perhaps, would have been more comfortable if she'd had black skin.

Still, her race and skin were part of who she was, and at the end of the book, when James and Ruth go to a Jewish wedding, Ruth pauses and recognizes that the wedding ceremony is part of who she was. Her parents were married in a similar ceremony and she would have been, too, if she'd married as her parents wanted her to. James recognizes that half of his genes come from a white Jewish background and he can feel a connection as well.