Posted by kip on 3/26/2004, 3:43 pm, in reply to "Not one of them???" hurston took a literary and philosophical stance. her opinions on race relations and culture were shaped by these; for the "illuminati" like wright, hughes, and johnson, it was clearly the other way around. hurston refused to place race above everything else, in essence not following the "party line". i believe the truth was somewhere in between these two positions. however, hurston's attempt to transcend racial politics is the reason she is so embraced by young people of all ethnicities today (Anglo high school students, for instance, can be intimidated or bewildered when they confront richard wright, which was sort of his objective). even though they didn't fully accept her, they (the harlem renaissance core participants) may have grudgingly admitted that it was good to simply have a black writer getting attention, so they didn't viciously attack her in print. gossip, heresay, and social exclusion were their primary responses. check the reviews her contemporaries wrote in the new york times, the atlantic, harper's, etc. this is in databases in large libraries.
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hurston refused to "battle", choosing instead to focus on intra-racial issues. she refused to believe the racist indictments had andy significance, as if not wanting to dignify them with an answer. an argument could be made for this position. the same can be said for her pro-segregation, but with equalized funding, opinion on court-ordered integration.
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