Du Bois’ notion of the veil describes a mechanism of racialization. The veil operates like a projector screen for the forced attribution of racial identity by white people upon black bodies. Du Bois argues that real black selves are hidden “within” or behind “the veil.”10 That is also the reason for what Du Bois describes as double consciousness in Souls; blacks hold in tension the knowledge of how whites see them within the veil and the self-knowledge of who they know themselves to be behind the veil. In Souls Du Bois describes “double consciousness” and “the veil” as hermeneutical keys to
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