We Wear The Mask Essay

Maximilian J. Martin

Professor Finger

ENGL 201B

29 March 2023

The Making of the Mask

In psychology ‘masking’ is the act of protecting oneself from social rejection. This goal is achieved through meticulous displays of etiquette, social capitulation, and imitation. Author Paul Lawrence Dunbar represents this continuous act of concealment as a literal mask in his 1895 poem “We Wear the Mask”. The poem deftly illustrates the struggles and triumphs of African-Americans who’ve been forced to “..wear the mask” (1) in response to oppression across history.

The oppression of Africans and African-Americans is rooted in 19th century assumptions about race, economy, and social hierarchy. Chattel slavery, a system of violence based on the presumed inferiority

In response to this definition, slaves began to create a mask for themselves based on white views of black people. Slaves played dumb, acting stupid and obedient around whites in order to avoid violence and limit suspicion. Slaves would break tools, maim animals, poison food, feign illness, work slowly, then cover their actions by playing the fool. This kind of day-to-day resistance took precedence over escape, as escaping meant risking violence to oneself and one's family. However, even those lucky enough to escape were still subject to a colossal racial hierarchy which dictated that blacks act in a completely subservient manner. In the eyes of white people, to be black was to be inferior and unworthy of anything but servitude. Backing up this claim was the United States government, ruling in 1857 that...

[...African-Americans] had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit. He was bought and sold, and

Though the Union ended the war victorious and in doing so ended slavery, the consequences of the south’s “peculiar institution” would last for hundreds of years yet; as Dunbar states “[...]oh the clay is vile beneath our feet, and long the mile” (12). Despite this, African-Americans unanimously celebrated their newfound freedom. Following the Civil War, the 14th Amendment nullified the Dred-Scott decision in 1868 as part of Reconstruction (1865-1877), a temporary major step forward in African-Americans’ pursuit of equality. During Reconstruction, African-Americans enjoyed a brief period of increased political rights, legal treatment, and highly situational freedom from white control. Being able to vote freely, black majorities naturally elected Republican (re: anti-slavery) leaders. In response, white Southerners formed groups like the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White Brotherhood, and the Whitecaps. These terrorist organizations resorted to intimidation, beatings, rape, and murder to return control of the South to conservative white Democrats (re: pro-slavery). This “redemption” of the South was indisputably successful, leading to a massive backslide of civil rights starting in 1877. In the following decades conservative white Democrats stripped away the political rights of African-Americans through disenfranchisement. In the absence of