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"Does Hurston 'owe' her race anything" (Hinton, 2)? As previously discussed, many of Hurston's contemporaries criticized her lack of racial issues in her work. A good question to ask is "does Hurston's fiction further racial equality?" (Hinton). Kip Hinton discusses Hurston's approach to race relations in comparision to the common school of thought during her time. Alain Locke crticized Hurston for avoiding racial confrontations (Hinton, 2). All of Hurston's critics said that she gave in to the stereotype of a typical African-American. This in turn furthered the sense of inequality present in society. The critics who held this view, according to Hinton, subscribed this style of confrontation: "They believed only by preaching to the white reader about how wonderful blacks really were and how horrible discrimination was, could equality be achieved" (Hinton, 2). This argument is really a feeble one. Hinton claims that this argument lacks reason because "telling a racist he's a racist won't make him change" (Hinton, 2). If the reader can not read Hurston's work and see that she cared deeply about equality, dealing with it in her special way, then they will never change. The most important thing to keep in mind when you think of Zora Neale Hurston is that she was a literary genius. She may have been a woman, and an African-American, that is why someone wrote, "Zora would have been Zora even if she'd been an Eskimo" (Hinton, 3). That is why she was so clear on her definition of race relations. She believed that equality was achieved by showing the oppressor the wonderful things in life, not constantly pointing out the bad. Hurston put it best when she cried out, "at certain times I have no race, I AM ME."
Because of the strong social pressure to conform to predefined notions of conventional (read European) beauty that the dominant culture exerts on all American womenAll characters have flaws, whether they be overt or subtle, and they are almost never outright...