What is the theme in Voices from the Harlem Renaissance by Nathan Irvin Huggins?

The question of nature and nurture is seen in several of the essays and stories, but perhaps one of the most outstanding is in "Blades of Steel" by Rudolph Fisher. In this story, Fisher introduces a character he calls Dirty Cozzens. The young man picked up the nickname from his color with someone initially calling him "dirty yallar" because of his skin tone. Fisher notes that Cozzens now has two facts against him - his friends have tagged him with this less-than-pleasing nickname and his environment has little in the way of positive reinforcement. Whether Cozzens would have been different in a different environment or with a different start in life is not a question explored by Fisher.