Question

In How It Feels to Be Colored Me, which meaning of veneer most closely matches its meaning in the following passage (paragraphs ____)?

I dance wildly inside myself; I yell within, I whoop; I shake my assegai above my head, I hurl it true to the markyeeeeooww! I am in the jungle and living in the jungle way. My face is painted red and yellow and my body is painted blue. My pulse is throbbing like a war drum. I want to slaughter something–give pain, give death to what, I do not know. But the pie ends. The men of the orchestra wipe their lips and rest their fingers. I creep back slowly to the veneer we call civilization with the last tone and fine the white friend sitting motionless in his seat, smoking calmly.
“Good music they have here,” he remarks, drumming the table with his fingertips.

Question 14 options:

a)
any of the thin layers bonded together to form plywood

b)
a plastic or porcelain coating bonded to the surface of an imperfect tooth

c)
a superficial or deceptively attractive appearance, display, or effect

d)
a protective or ornamental facing for brick or stone

Answer 1

"Veneer" here is meant in the sense of a superficial or deceptively attractive appearance, display, or effect (c).

The character is talking about how he feels most like his natural self when he is dancing and chanting to his people's music, but that he retreats to "civilization" in front of the white men when the music stops. The implied meaning of the word "veneer" is that the white man's way of being civilized is false in the narrator's mind, but he does it to please "the white friend."