Hurston’s Mrs. Turner embodies assimilationists building altars to unattainable whiteness

Evidence

Hurston chose neither to glorify nor denigrate southern Black culture, probably knowing that media suasionists and assimilationists would be upset with her choices. But Hurston hardly cared. Instead, she took a revealing shot at the lunacy of Black assimilationists through her construction of Mrs. Turner, a friend of Janie’s. “Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria,” Hurston narrated. “Mrs. Turner, like all other believers had built an altar to the unattainable—Caucasian characteristics for all. Her god would smite her, would hurl her from pinnacles and lose her in deserts, but she would not forsake his altars.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 891

Categorization

• DEFINE: Mrs. Turner is the literary type-figure of the assimilationist — worshiping Caucasian characteristics despite their unattainability.
• XREF: Instantiates the assimilationist category Kendi defined earlier in the book; a concrete literary embodiment worth citing when placing arguments.
• ADDENDUM: Connects to the dress/identity signaling thread: Mrs. Turner’s worship of ‘white folkish’ appearance is a literary portrait of exactly the identity-policing dynamics the immodesty essay traces.