Race Quotes

This quote is representative of Daniel Cosway/Boyd's bizarre and contradictory letter. First off, he spouts a lot of racist baloney about Creoles that was unfortunately common belief at the time – the belief that they are somehow "degenerate" because of their exposure to the Caribbean climate. But then he tries to pump himself up. He's no ordinary colored, but an educated one, such that whites are astonished at how "quick" or clever he is. But he knows that if he pumps himself up too much, Rochester will just think he's fibbing, so he actually pins a racist stereotype on himself. As a colored man, he can't possibly be smart enough to make up a story, can he?

Christophine here expresses a canny sense of how her world works. Since the békés (or whites) hold political power, they are able to, in some sense, control what counts as reality. (The back-story here is that Christophine was sentenced to prison by a white magistrate for practicing obeah.) On the other hand, if the békés don't "say it foolishness," i.e., if they do believe in obeah, then obeah works, at least to the extent that an obeah practitioner like Christophine can frighten people into giving her what she wants (of which there are numerous examples throughout the book). Thus, even though she starts by admitting the power of the béké's word, she ends the quote by telling Antoinette, a béké, what to do.

It's difficult to be completely sympathetic with Antoinette when we see her racism in a moment such as this one. Despite her obvious sympathy and identification with the blacks in her world, she still maintains many racist attitudes, a possible contributing factor in her rejection of Sandi Cosway.