How we cite our quotes: Act.Line
Quote #1
Oh no, master is white man. And good christian. Black man juju can't touch master. (2.88)
In Joseph's view, the power of certain religious ceremonies and objects is race-dependent; the costumes of the egungun can't do anything bad to the Pilkingses because they are white.
Quote #2
Official business you white man's eunuch? (3.2)
One of the market women gives Amusa a hard time for coming to break up preparations for Elesin's suicide ritual. Apparently, because he's now working for the "white man" (and perhaps, too, because he's converted to Islam), he is perceived as a "eunuch" who has betrayed their community.
Quote #3
Oh, now I understand. Before they can put on those knickers the white man first cuts off their weapons. (3.13)
This is yet another joke from one of the market women about the white men turning Amusa (and other indigenous folks) into eunuchs. A eunuch, for the record, is a man who's been castrated. So the joke, then, is that by working for white people, Amusa has lost his masculinity.
Quote #4
You ignorant man. It is not he who calls himself Elesin Oba, it is his blood that says it. As it called out to his father before him and will to his son after him. And that is in spite of everything your white man can do. (3.20)
The woman in the market thinks of Amusa and his "white man" as being on totally different sides from her and the other Yoruba—a side that dishonors their traditions. She contends that Amusa and the British will be unable to stop them from carrying out the necessary rituals.
Quote #5
Move if you dare. We have your hats, what will you do about it? Didn't the white man teach you to take off your hats before women? (3.47)
Now an unnamed girl in the market is making fun of Amusa for his alliance with the white British administrators in their region. In asking about the manners he did and didn't learn from the English, she sets us up to see him as a mere puppet/puppy of the British.
Quote #6
—… I have a rather faithful ox called Amusa. (3.52)
When the girls are making fun of Amusa, they imitate the British talking about him. They assume that the British operate under a racist view of Amusa as a "faithful ox" rather than a person.
Quote #7
OLUNDE: Don't think it was just the war. Before that even started I had plenty of time to study your people. I saw nothing, finally, that gave you the right to pass judgment on other peoples and their ways. Nothing at all.
JANE [hesitantly]: Was it the… colour thing? I know there is some discrimination.
OLUNDE: Don't make it so simple, Mrs. Pilkings. You make it sound as if when I left, I took nothing with me.
JANE: Yes… and to tell the truth, only this evening, Simon and I agreed we never really knew what you left with.
OLUNDE: Neither did I. But I found out over there. I am grateful to your country for that. And I will never give it up. (4.114-118)
Even when Jane is trying to be (somewhat) sensitive to Olunde and get some intel on his experience, she gets it wrong. Here, she assumes that Olunde's clashes with the British in England were purely the result of skin color, and he has to clarify that it went beyond that. His objection implies that cultural factors were at play as well.
Quote #8
You did not fail in the main thing ghostly one. We know the roof covers the rafters, the cloth covers blemishes; who would have known that the white skin covered our future, preventing us from seeing the death our enemies had prepared for us. The world is set adrift and its inhabitants are lost. Around them, there is nothing but emptiness. (5.20)
After his capture, Elesin frequently riffs on Simon's whiteness by using nicknames for him with ghost in them. And here, he also implies that "white skin" managed to prevent Elesin and others from perceiving their disastrous future—it's as if he has been blinded.
Quote #9
No. What he said must never be unsaid. The contempt of my own son rescued something of my shame at your hands. You have stopped me in my duty but I know now that I did give birth to a son. Once I mistrusted him for seeking the companionship of those my spirit knew as enemies of our race. Now I understand. One should seek to obtain the secrets of his enemies. He will avenge my shame, white one. His spirit will destroy you and yours. (5.24)
Elesin continues to see the clash between his religion and culture and Simon's as one centered on race, referring to the British as enemies of his own.
Quote #10
It is when the alien hand pollutes the source of will, when a stranger force of violence shatters the mind's calm resolution, this is when a man is made to commit the awful treachery of relief, commit in his thought the unspeakable blasphemy of seeing the hand of the gods in this alien rupture of the world. I know it was this thought that killed me, sapped my powers and turned me into an infant in the hands of unnamable strangers. I made to utter my spells anew but my tongue merely rattled in my mouth. I fingered hidden charms and the contact was damp; there was no spark left to sever the life-strings that should stretch from every finger-tip. My will was squelched in the spittle of an alien race, and all because I had committed the blasphemy of thought—that there might be the hand of the gods in a stranger's intervention.
Although he does ultimately take responsibility for not having the strength to pull off the ritual before the British could get there, he does emphasize the role an "alien race" played in the whole affair. If they hadn't been around, Elesin couldn't have convinced himself that their intervention was perhaps the result of the gods' intervention. Or so Elesin's telling himself here.