In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk in which he claimed: “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.” That was 1903. American society is in the last year of the second decade of the twenty-first century, and I wonder if that famous quote still applies. In 1903, Jim Crow dominated every aspect of American life and forced the black community into the shadows. Du Bois used the metaphor of the “veil” to describe the racial separation that existed in his lifetime.
It is this barrier that prevented white America from truly understanding the anguish and hurt caused by centuries of exploitation. As a result white America can physically “see” the black community, but hidden in plain sight is the simmering resentment and frustration that occasionally makes its way through the veil to an oblivious world in the form of violent outbursts.
The Souls of Black Folk is a classic. Its themes of hope and despair resonate throughout its pages. Du Bois doesn’t try to reconcile the vast emotions within a community less than fifty years removed from slavery. Instead, he focuses on the dilemma faced by white America. The veil conceals the hurt and pain caused by a society that kidnapped, enslaved, and exploited a people whose only crime is that they didn’t die from the close contact with white Europeans as the indigenous population did after the Spanish arrived in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Du Bois understands the role of religion in the black community as references to the veil most certainly references a barrier separating one thing from another. The New Testament gospels describe the moment Christ surrendered his life on the cross as the moment the barrier separating God from his people because of Adam’s sin is finally removed.
“And Jesus cried with a loud voice, and gave up the ghost. And the veil of the temple was rent from top to the bottom. And, when the centurion, which stood over him, saw that he so cried out, and gave up the ghost, he said, Truly, this man was the Son of God.” Mark 15:37-39 (KJV)
For Du Bois, the veil not only represented a physical barrier (i.e. centuries of slavery, Jim Crow laws, economic inequalities) but also a psychological wall where blacks are conditioned to see themselves as “less than” whites. As a result, the veil hides the real essence of the black community from the outside world because within its confines is safety and security.
Within the veil, the black community can discuss its problems in high levels of unemployment, academic underachievement, unwed mothers, drug and alcohol abuse without being scrutinized as being lazy and worthless. Likewise, achievement can be recognized without the whispers of “if it weren’t for affirmative action” that ignore the sacrifices of family.
In 1903, Du Bois claimed race would permeate the twentieth century. It’s 2019, four hundred years after the arrival of those first Africans in Jamestown, and race still permeates the land of the free and the home of the brave. Maybe behind the veil is still a safe place. The world seems pretty crazy.
Later.
PS. On the campaign trail in 2016, the President said he’d release his taxes when the audit was complete. Now, he refuses to do so.
Integrity (noun) – The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.