What does Dee mean when she calls Maggie backward?

When Dee calls Maggie backward, she means that she is uneducated and ignorant whereas Dee herself is educated and knowledgeable. 
While she was away getting an education, Dee changed. She decided to name herself Wangero and became more interested in her cultural heritage. After returning home to visit her family, Dee asks her mother for the heirloom quilts her grandmother made. She wants to display things that her family has created and used—including the quilts. 
When Dee asks for the quilts, her mother says no. She promised the quilts to Maggie, Dee's sister who lives at home and is marrying a local man. Dee gets upset. Alice Walker writes:

"Maggie can't appreciate these quilts!" she said. "She'd probably be backward enough to put them to everyday use."

Dee means that Maggie is ignorant of their heritage because, unlike Dee, she is uneducated on cultural issues. However, Dee is missing the point. The quilts are meant to be used. They're family heirlooms—not art to put on a wall and point to when discussing cultural histories.
Her mother remembers when she offered Dee a quilt as she left to go to college and her daughter refused, saying they weren't in style. Dee thinks that Maggie can't appreciate the quilts the way she, Dee, can now. However, it's likely that Maggie is able to better appreciate the quilts. She learned quilting from her family and will use the quilts, remembering her grandmother each time she sees one. Dee, on the other hand, would not have the same emotional attachment or experience. 


Dee (Wangero) makes her comment in the context of a conversation about what to do with quilts that were made from "pieces of dresses [that] Grandma used to wear." Their mother has promised the quilts to Maggie for when she gets married. Dee protests that Maggie is too "backward" to know what to do with the quilts and will simply put them to "everyday use."
Their mother counters that she hopes that Maggie will use them for practical reasons and, in the narrative, she recollects on how she had tried to give Dee the quilts when she went away to college. Dee had then told her that the quilts were "old-fashioned" and "out of style."
Dee has acquired a sense of heritage (Walker wrote the story in response to the rise of the black consciousness movement) somewhere along the way and expects to claim the quilts as evidence of her connection to her ancestors. Because Maggie has remained in their rural town and did not acquire the education that Dee has, Dee assumes that Maggie could not possibly have the same appreciation for the quilts or an understanding of how the quilts connect to lineage. 
The story is told by the mother of the two young women. The narrator appreciates Dee's gifts but dislikes her pretensions. Maggie may be "backward," but her mother sees in her an authenticity and a rootedness that is missing in Dee, whose claims to heritage appear to be more of a novelty than an authentic interest.

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