Harou, I appreciate your point that the singular masculine referent was standard usage at the time that Zora Neal Hurston wrote her books and articles. Actually, I hadn't focused on Huston's use of the male pronoun. Thanks for pointing that out.

I agree with you that the singular referent for groups of people is dated. But what I take the most exception to in Zora Neal Hurston's quote is her use of what I believe to be negative and untrue stereotypical descriptors for the entire Black population. In my opinion, Hurston is saying that Black people routinely engage in
shuckin' & jivin' * when White people (presumably even in good faith) ask them any question.

And, according to Houston, White people will accept anything that Black people tell them, because "they know too little about "The Negro" to know that they're being "played".

I don't believe that those descriptors of Black people or of White people were true across the board in Houston's time and I believe that they are even less true now.

Furthermore,
in my opinion, neither the mindset & nature that Houston describes of "The Negro" nor the image of the clueless "white man" are useful when it comes to engaging in open & honesty communication between people of those two races, or any other races/ethnicity.


*See Professor X response to the question "What is shuckin and jivin'