Black Folk Essay Research Paper The Different

Black Folk Essay, Research Paper

The Different Conceptions of the Veil in The Souls of Black Folk

“For now we see through a glass, darkly”

-Isiah 25:7

W.E.B. Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folk, a collection of autobiographical

and historical essays contains many themes. There is the theme of souls and

their attainment of consciousness, the theme of double consciousness and the

duality and bifurcation of black life and culture; but one of the most striking

themes is that of “the veil.” The veil provides a link between the 14 seemingly

unconnected essays that make up The Souls of Black Folk. Mentioned at least once

in most of the 14 essays it means that, “the Negro is a sort of seventh son,

born with a veil, and gifted with second sight in this American world, -a world

with yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself

through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this

double consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the

eyes of others.”Footnote1 The veil is a metaphor for the separation and

invisibility of black life and existence in America and is a reoccurring theme

in books abo ut black life in America.

Du Bois’s veil metaphor, “In those somber forests of his striving his

own soul rose before him, and he saw himself, -darkly as though through a

veil”Footnote2, is a allusion to Saint Paul’s line in Isiah 25:7, “For now we

see through a glass, darkly.”Footnote3 Saint Paul’s use of the veil in Isiah and

later in Second Corinthians is similar to Du Bois’s use of the metaphor of the

veil. Both writers claim that as long as one is wrapped in the veil their

attempts to gain self-consciousness will fail because they will always see the

image of themselves reflect back to them by others. Du Bois applies this by

claiming that as long as on is behind the veil the, “world which yields him no

self-consciousness but who only lets him see himself through the revelation of

the other world.”Footnote4 Saint Paul in Second Corinthians says the way to self

consciousness and an understanding lies in, “the veil being taken away, Now the

lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the lord is there is liberty.” Du

Bois does not claim that transcending the veil will lead to a better

understanding of the lord but like Saint Paul he finds that only through

transcending “the veil” can people achieve liberty and gain self-consciousness.

The veil metaphor in Souls of Black Folk is symbolic of the

invisibility of blacks in America. Du Bois says that Blacks in America are a

forgotten people, “after the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the

Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a

veil.”Footnote5 The invisibility of Black existence in America is one of the

reasons why Du Bois writes Souls of Black Folk in order to elucidate the

“invisible” history and strivings of Black Americans, “I have sought here to

sketch, in vague, uncertain outline, the spiritual world in which ten thousand

Americans live and strive.”Footnote6 Du Bois in each of the following chapters

tries to manifest the strivings of Black existence from that of the

reconstruction period to the black spirituals and the stories of rural black

children that he tried to educate. Du Bois in Souls of Black Folk is grappling

with trying to establish some sense of history and memory for Black Americans,

Du Bois struggles in the pages of the book to prevent Black Americans from

becoming a Seventh Son invisible to the rest of the world, hidden behind a veil

of prejudice, “Hear my Cry, O God the reader vouch safe that this my book fall

not still born into the world-wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle one, from its

leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest

wonderful.”Footnote7 The invisibility of Black existence is a recurring theme

in other books about Black history. In Raboteau’s book slave religion is called,

“the invisible institution of the antebellum South.”Footnote8 Raboteau tries to

uncover and bring to light the religious practices of Black slaves, he tried to

bring their history out of the veil. Rabatoeu writes how religion for slaves was

a way in which, “slaves maintained their identity as persons despite a system

bent on reducing them to a subhuman level… In the midst of slavery religion

was for the enslaved a space of meaning, freedom, and transcendence.”Footnote9

Because slave religion was an invisible institution hidden by a veil from white

slave masters it provided a way in which slaves could resist social death. The

history of Black women is also the history of a people made invisible; hidden

behind the veil. Bell Hooks in her study of Black women and feminism tries to

bring to light the forgotten past of black women who have also been hidden

behind a veil, ” Traditionally, scholars have emphasized

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