Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.

The speaker reframes discrimination as the discriminator’s loss rather than her own. By saying she is “astonished” instead of angry, she asserts emotional autonomy: prejudice may exist, but it does not get to govern her self-regard. The punchline—“How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company?”—turns a social slight into a comic inversion, presenting confidence as a form of resistance. The line also critiques the irrationality of racism: it is not merely immoral but self-defeating, depriving people of human connection and delight. In Hurston’s idiom, humor becomes a strategy for dignity and psychological freedom.