Question

What are the major themes of the essay "What White Publishers Won't Print"

Answer 1

Hurston argues that the American society has misapprehended black people, even to the present day. And it's not because it is hard to understand and accept black people, but because the white majority is entirely indifferent to them. They don't care about black people's preoccupations, struggles, internal problems. And it isn't only white Americans who employ such an attitude. It is also colored immigrants and people of other ethnicities who join in.

Hence the misconceptions about black people. They are still being perceived in the context of their former slavery. They are almost never seen as heterogeneous population, where there are educated and uneducated, skilled and unskilled. Thereby the white majority reinforces the ancient narrative that blacks don't even deserve education, as it won't improve their inherently corrupt nature

The media don't help either. Their portrayal of black people is uniform. Of course, their work is commercial, and they won't make stories that don't sell. But that only means that the general audience is not interested in ordinary, everyday, human stories about black people. It is not only a snobbish perspective; it is a socially detrimental perspective which excludes a huge population which is a part of America.