A Small Place Race Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Paragraph)

Quote #4

He came to Antigua as a refugee (running away from Hitler) from Czechoslovakia. This man hated us so much that he would send his wife to inspect us before we were admitted into his presence. (2.3)

You'd think that a World War II refugee would've figured out that discrimination is a bad thing, but this anecdote sadly proves us wrong. But that's the thing about racism: It never makes logical sense.

Quote #5

There was a […] school which only in my lifetime began to accept girls who were born outside a marriage in Antigua […] it had never dawned on anyone that this was a way of keeping black children out of this school. (2.3)

Institutional racism is rarely direct, instead limiting the rights of people of color through backhanded means. For real, though—Why in the world would a kid born out of wedlock not deserve an education?

Quote #6

We thought they were un-Christian-like; we thought they were small-minded; we thought they were like animals, a bit below human standards as we understood those standards to be. (2.3)

Here, Kincaid beautifully flips a typically racist argument to illustrate how hypocritical the colonialists were. The Antiguans took the British code of morality quite literally, even if the Brits didn't feel beholden to it themselves.