Analysis Of The Black Veil By W. E. B. Du Bois

Observed differences lead to stereotypes. Those stereotypes usher in biases that lead to racism. Racism oppresses, and the oppressed struggle to find way to cope. This unfortunate cycle has plagued the dark skinned for as long as history can tell and has cast a veil over them as they tried to cope with their newfound freedom from slavery and colonialism. W. E. B. Du Bois describes that the veil oppresses the black population by giving them a one-way view of the potential of success available to the white population. On the other side, the white population is unable to see and understand the struggles faced by the people hidden behind the dark veil, and rather than cooperating, often treat the blacks as inferiors. Du Bois asserts that the best …show more content…
Du Bois describes the black folk as a problem, a people synonymous to a great struggle post-emancipation America. In his lectures regarding these issues, he writes of his first encounter that helped him understand the oppression always present in his lifetime when he reminisces of his elementary school encounter with a white girl that rejected him as a partner in a school assignment. Du Bois recalls, “Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others, or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil” (Du Bois, 2). The Africans were now free in America but their freedom did not grant them liberty. A dark vast veil overshadowed their liberty. Their freedom was limited as they found themselves belonging to two greatly contrasting identities: African and American. The African identity brought them values of their past and the their long strife which concluded with a longing to attain self-conscious manhood, much of what they saw on the other side of the veil in the white man. Unfortunately, the Americans