What is the paradox of the passage when Dee wants to take the quilts and her mother refuses because she has promised Maggie to give her the quilts...

In "Everyday Use" by Alice Walker, there is a title="paradox"
href="http://ai.stanford.edu/~csewell/culture/litterms.htm">paradox in the
portion of the story where Dee argues to get heirloom quilts that the narrator (her
mother) had promised to her other daughter, Maggie.

First,
a paradox is a statement that at first seems self-contradictory and/or untrue. In
Shakespeare's Macbeth, a main theme is "fair is foul and foul is
fair." These means good things are bad and bad things are good. This seems impossible,
however, throughout the play people who seem good are evil, and those accused of being
evil are good.

Dee has rejected her family's heritage and
has adopted her race's heritage—she has taken an African name and
adopted an African manner of dress. With regard to society, things that matter to her
are material in nature. While she admires African folk art, she
rejects society's enslavement of the ancestors who made the pieces. This is
paradoxical.

Dee descends upon mother and sister's home and
begins to snatch up different household items (the churn top and the kitchen benches).
The fact that the pieces show impressions of the hands and bodies that have used them
means nothing in terms of Dee's history—she simply feels they will look good in her own
home. However, the reader can tell that the narrator is connected to these "family
treasures:"

readability="7">

When she finished wrapping the dasher the handle
stuck out. I took it for a moment in my hands. You didn't have to look close to see
where hands pushing the dasher up and down to make butter had left a kind of sink in the
wood...you could see where thumbs and fingers had sunk into the
wood.

This is lost on Dee.
When the question of the quilts comes up, Dee argues that she
should have them rather than Maggie. Dee believes that Maggie, being a little slow and
uneducated, could never appreciate the quilts as
she would. Dee insists they are priceless—monetarily speaking.
Dee's mother asks:

readability="5">

What would you do with
them?

Dee
responds:

readability="6">

"Hang them," she said. As if that was the only
thing you could do with
quilts.

Maggie decides that
she isn't going to fight her sister for the quilts.

readability="10">

"She can have them, Mama," she said, like
somebody used to never winning anything, or having anything reserved for her. "I can
'member Grandma Dee without the
quilts."

When the question of
the quilts arises, the narrator recalls that she had offered one of the quilts to Dee
when she went away to college, but her daughter had refused,
saying...

readability="6">

...they were old-fashioned, out of
style.

Now, however, Dee
believes she has a better understanding of the value of things than Maggie. At first one
might believe this to be true because society often promotes the idea that educated
people are smarter than those who are not. Maggie, however, is truly more intelligent
for she, without "formal" schooling, knows the
real value of the quilts made by her grandmother. The heritage that
Dee has rejected is what makes the pieces truly
"priceless."

Another contradiction we find with Dee is that
she originally saw the quilts as worthless. Now she understands the "cosmopolitan" value
of old pieces, but not the intrinsic, historical and family value of quilts she had
originally rejected.

It is also paradoxical that Dee would
never think to use these things for "everyday" use because of their material value.
Their true value, though, is using them every day to remain
connected to their family's ancestors.