We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar

Name:
Tutor:
Course:
Date:
History: Identity
Every person is drawn to study history because of their deep drive to understand their identity and answer the question: Who am I? For persons belonging to minority groups, this search is often mired in both internal and external factors not shared by the dominant cultural identity. Both the poems We Wear the Mask by Paul Laurence Dunbar and from Citizen, I by Claudia Rankine manifest this idea in several ways that this essay will demonstrate.
Dunbar’s famous work, We Wear the Mask, is written from a black community’s perspective and serves to illustrate how most of the world is unaware of his group’s struggles. The poem is a reaction to the experience of being a member of a minority community in a world that largely assumes that life has improved for the black man and yet the reality is that they have to constantly endure racism and hardship. He compares the daily pain of discrimination in an indifferent world to the wearing of a mask that presents a complacent face to the world and hides the struggles of its wearer: “Why should the world be overwise,/In counting all our tears and sighs?/Nay, let them only see us, while/We wear the mask” (Dunbar, 6-9).
Marginalized people have to present a brave face as they come to terms with their identities in a biased and unsympathetic society. Because the dominant cultural identity is incapable of relating to the histories and experiences of non-dominant groups, members of these disenfranchised groups have to be careful to conceal their difficulties and true selves. Wearing a mask is a reaction to a society that is incapable of understanding or empathizing with the pains and frustration of being a minority. Black people must appear content with their circumstances in order to survive in a prejudiced society: “Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!” (Dunbar, 13-15).
The bigotries of the dominant cultural identity are revealed in Rankine’s from Citizen, I where she nar...