What does "the vast veil" symbolize in The Souls of Black Folk?

W. E. B. Du Bois writes that when he was a child, there was a vogue at his school for buying and distributing elaborate visiting cards. He enjoyed doing this himself until one girl peremptorily refused his card. At this point, Du Bois suddenly realized that he was different from the other children, “shut out from their world by a vast veil.” This separation did not, at least initially, make him feel inferior. On the contrary,

I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads.

However, Du Bois says, most people on his side of the veil were less fortunate and wasted their youth either in “tasteless sycophancy” or “silent hatred of the pale world about them.” Later, Du Bois also came to resent the veil, as he saw that opportunities white people took for granted were routinely denied to him. Indeed, even his initial contempt may have been little more than bravado, for the veil has an insidious and purely negative effect in dividing humanity.

The veil symbolizes not only the division between black and white Americans, but also the divisions black Americans feel within their souls. Du Bois says that the black American has “no true self-consciousness.” Instead, he is forced by the surrounding society to see himself as white people see him. This leads to a peculiar “double-consciousness” in which

One ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

The vast veil, therefore, is doubly divisive.

What does the "vast veil" symbolize in "The Souls of Black Folk"?

At the beginning of The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois discusses his early childhood and the first occasion on which he realized that the life of a Black person was different from the life of a white person. It was not until a visiting card he gave to a white girl was refused by her that he realized he was different from his friends.

He thought of this difference as a "vast veil." The veil is, essentially, racism and the racist way in which society is set up. The veil represents everything which keeps Black people, like Du Bois, out of the world which white people inhabit. At first, Du Bois behaved as if the veil was ridiculous. He did not make any attempt to creep into the white world, preferring instead to assure himself that he was equal to his white friends, excelling at sports and at school.

As he grew older, however, he began to be more and more conscious of the veil and how difficult it made his life. He began to resent the fact that no matter how hard he worked, how intelligent he was, or how well he performed in the sporting arena, he would never be able to access the plaudits his white friends could access, even when they were considerably less talented than he was.