Quote 7
[Tea Cake:] "Thank yuh, ma’am, but don’t say you’se ole. You’se uh lil girl baby all de time. God made it so you spent yo’ ole age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo’ young girl days to spend wid me." (19.127)
In an attempt to compliment Janie, Tea Cake remarks that she is still a young "lil girl baby" to him because she seems to have all her youthful exuberance and instinctive trust about her still. When hearing this, readers immediately recognize the truth of his words; Janie spent her "ole age first," or days of bitterness, with Logan and Joe and saved her "young girl days," or childlike innocence, to lavish on her true love, Tea Cake.
Quote 8
[Tea Cake]: "It’s bad bein’ strange n*****s wid white folks. Everybody is against yuh."
"Dat sho is de truth. De ones de white man know is nice colored folks. De ones he don’t know is bad n*****s."(19.40-41)
In the setting of the novel, the worth of black people is defined by their relationship with white people. Thus, those black people that are well-known and attested for by white people are considered harmless by society, while those unknown to any whites are immediately suspect. This is a guilty-until-proven-innocent kind of situation.
Quote 9
[Lias]: "De Indians gahn east, man. It’s dangerous."
[Tea Cake]: "Dey don’t always know. Indians don’t know much uh nothin’, tuh tell de truth. Else dey’d own dis country still. De white folks ain’t gone
Another blatant example of perceived intelligence being based on a racial hierarchy. Here, Tea Cake thinks that the Native Americans don’t know anything, and the white people are the smartest. It’s strange that he seems to be very matter of fact in the way he essentially implies that white people are smarter than black people; that’s why Tea Cake is waiting to see what the white people do about the hurricane.