How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
No wife of his was going to do n***** work. (8.11)
Ray never minces words. For him, cleaning houses is work that's beneath white people, which means he also sees black people as being lesser people (as if you couldn't tell by his word choice).
Quote #2
The town of Three Rivers was incorporated in 1653 and grew steadily and legally, the law being white. Conversely, the reservation kept shrinking in acreage, the tribe's numbers dwindling. (13.1)
Three Rivers, Connecticut—the setting of the novel—wouldn't exist if the Native Americans hadn't been run out of town. It's a town built on racial prejudice.
Quote #3
[Mr. LoPresto] advised us not to judge the Indians by our own higher standards. They were indigenous savages and we were the product of ancient Greece and Rome and the rest of Western civilization. It was like comparing apples to oranges, monkeys to men. (13.9)
We don't even know where to begin with all the offensiveness here. The fact that this teacher is teaching racism in school? That he calls Native Americans "Indians" and "inferior"? Or that he equates them with monkeys? Ugh.