How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
[Michael's intentions] were not good. He wanted a race of exotics skipping around being picturesque for him. What were those welfare mothers supposed to put in those pots? (3.131)
As far as Valerian is concerned, his son Michael isn't actually interested in helping people. He's more like an anthropologist who's fascinated by different cultures. That's not the same thing as being a good person. In fact, Valerian thinks that Michael is actually exploiting the people he helps by treating them like novelties.
Quote #2
As long as he burrowed in his plate like an animal, grunting in monosyllables, but not daring to look up, she was without fear. But when he smiled she saw small dark dogs galloping on silver feet. (4.79)
When she first encounters Son, Jade thinks of him as a primate animal. It's only when he smiles that she realizes he's a human being with secret thoughts. That's when she becomes uncomfortable, because she's forced to confront the fact that he's a human and that she has no clue what he's planning.
Quote #3
She caught the scent twelve days ago: the smell of a fasting, or starving, as the case might be, human. It was the smell of human afterbirth that only humans could produce. (4.188)
Thérèse's blindness has left her with an incredible sense of smell, which is why she knows that Son is around before anyone else on Isle des Chevaliers. She can tells he's around specifically because his starvation gives him a primitive smell that only humans are capable of producing. Thérèse's ability to detect this smell also gives her a closer connection to the world of primitive human nature, which is probably why she's also so good at reading people's true motives.
Quote #4
[He] fought hard against the animal smell and fought hard to regulate his breathing to hers, but the animal smell got worse and her breathing was too light and shallow for his own lungs. (4.321)
Son knows that he smells like an animal and will do almost anything to keep people from smelling it. At the end of the day, though, he even starts to feel like a primitive animal compared to the people who are living in Valerian Street's home. This feeling makes him wonder if he'll ever be able to convince Jade to be with a guy like him.
Quote #5
"You can't, you ugly barefoot baboon! Just because you're black you think you can come in here and give me orders? Sydney was right. He should have shot you on the spot. But no, a white man thought you were a human being and should be treated like one." (4.336)
Jade's best way for insulting Son is to compare him to a primitive baboon, which is unfortunately one of the slurs that white people use against black people. Jade is being racist in this moment, although we can cut her a little slack because Son is holding her by the arms and threatening to throw her out the window.
Quote #6
Treating her like another animal and both of them must have looked just like it in that room. One dog sniffing at the hindquarters of another, and the female, her back to him, not moving, but letting herself be sniffed. (4.345)
After Son grabs her and smells her hair, Jade feels ashamed. She thinks that smell is something that is attached to primitive people and animals, not civilized people like herself. But when Son reminds her that she has a smell just like everything else, she feels for a second that she might still be nothing more than an animal.
Quote #7
"Tell him anything but don't tell him I smelled you because then he would understand that there was something in you to smell and that I smelled it and if Valerian understands that then he will still know that there is something in you to be smelled." (4.347)
Scent is synonymous in Tar Baby with sexuality and animal magnetism. Son doesn't want the fact that he smelled Jade to be public knowledge because he thinks that knowledge of Jade's scent with inflame Valerian's passion. Jade doesn't want Valerian to know about the incident either, because she thinks that her smell must be somehow shameful.
Quote #8
"Oh, God, he scared the s—t out of me. He looked like a gorilla!" (5.29)
Margaret Street doesn't think of herself as a racist person, but she says quite a few racist things. Comparing Son to a gorilla, for example, is definitely racist. There's a bit of leeway here because Margaret is scared—Son was hiding in her freaking closet. On the other hand, it wouldn't kill her to take a few classes in sensitivity training.
Quote #9
Jadine's neck prickled at the description. She had volunteered n—, but not gorilla. (5.30)
Jade has a funny understanding of racial slurs. For example, she seems to think it's okay for her to call Son the "n" word, but she's not willing to let Margaret compare him to a primitive gorilla. This second insult is especially bad because it suggests that black people are somehow less evolved than white people.
Quote #10
She thought she was rescuing him from the night women who […] wanted her to settle for wifely competence when she could be almighty, to settle for fertility rather than originality, nurturing instead of building. (9.287)
Jade can't help but think that living in Eloe with Son and becoming a housewife would be an unfulfilling, primitive form of life. She's more interested in the things she thinks are developed, like big cities, fancy clothes, and university education.