We Wear the Mask

[2] We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,— This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise, We wear the mask!

[5] Braxton considers "We Wear the Mask" to be a protest poem which showed "strong racial pride".

The metaphor of a mask also says that African Americans are "preeminently commodities" and "marginally" citizens, according to the scholar Willie J. Harrell Jr.[12] The scholar Daniel P. Black considered "We Wear the Mask" Dunbar's magnum opus but described it as a risk that "could have cost him his life, and indeed ... undoubtedly would have—had nineteenth-century readers comprehended fully the poem's multiple meanings.

"[13] The poem was included as a summary to The Electric Playground's review of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity.