W. E. B Dubois Veil

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Introduction

This response paper seeks to address the following questions related to the book Souls of Black Folk written by W.E.B. DuBois in 1903. The author DuBois evaluates social, political, and economic issues which encapsulate the Civil War and the Freedmen's Bureau's role in Reconstruction. Important assertions made included the concept of the veil of race, which lead to “double-consciousness.” This also draws from the psychological, sociological and philosophical matters of dualism.
Response Questions:
1. What is the veil from a DuBois perspective?
2. What was DuBois trying to explain by introducing this concept?
3. Who do you think was the intended audience for this discussion?
4. To whom was he trying to explain these terms?
5. Can you think of examples today (or in the past few years) where the concept of the veil might be useful?

What is the veil from a DuBois perspective? According, to DuBois the veil was defined from three points of view. Firstly, veil proposes to the darker skin of Blacks which defines a physical delineation of from whiteness. Secondly, white people lack the clarity and humanity to see Blacks as “True” Americans. …show more content…

But such transformation calls for singular wisdom and patience. If while the healing of this vast sore is progressing, the races are to live for many years side by side, untied in economic effort, obeying common government, sensitive to mutual thought and feeling, yet subtly and silently separate in many matters of deeper human intimacy,—if this unusual and dangerous development is to progress amid peace and order, mutual respect and growing intelligence, it will call for social surgery at once the delicatest and nicest in modern history. It will demand broad-minded, upright men, both black and white” (Dubois

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