As I was reading the section about Mrs. Turner’s ideology, I was comparing her ideas to those of Emma Lou in The Blacker the Berry. Mrs. Turner and Emma Lou share the belief that those with lighter skin are better than those with darker skin, but Mrs. Turner seems to have a more pessimistic view of her own position within this hierarchy. Though Mrs. Turner is proud of those physical characteristics that she considers “set her aside from Negroes” (Hurston 134), she eagerly accepts a position of subservience to Janie because she admires her “Caucasian characteristics” (Hurston 139), and Emma Lou is never able to accept anything less than closeness to the “right kind of people.” Emma Lou experiences repeated moments of frustration when others consider her less desirable than women with lighter skin because she does not accept until the end of the novel that the system of racial hierarchy in which she believes places her in a lower position than she thinks she deserves to hold. On the other hand, Mrs. Turner very clearly defines her position within this racial hierarchy and acts accordingly: she believes that she must be subservient to people with Caucasian characteristics, like Janie, but that she ought to be “cruel to those more negroid than herself in direct ratio to their negroness” (Hurston 138). Emma Lou views herself as a victim of this colorist hierarchy, whereas Mrs. Turner actively alternates between subservience and cruelty to uphold the system she so firmly believes in, even though she understands that her physical characteristics prevent her from attaining the ideal that she worships. In her role as an active promoter of this colorist system, Mrs. Turner more closely resembled Emma Lou’s mother than Emma Lou. However, though Emma Lou believes, and rightly, that she is a victim of colorist prejudice, her own scorn of dark-skinned people and admiration for the “right kind of people” promote this system in the same way that Mrs. Turner’s alternately subservient and cruel behavior does.