TEWWG pg 47

Text: And then he spit in that gold-looking vase that anybody here would have been glad to put on their front room table.

The spittoons is basically a metaphor for the "white mans power" because it is like Jody one-upping everybody in his town. The town was support to be a place for colored people to get away form poor treatment but now Jody is basically running it and everybody else is following under is command. It is not much different than a  normal town with its while folk bossing the colored around and dong there work for them.