Dunbar wrote "We Wear the Mas

Why should the world be over-wise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

–“We Wear the Mask,”
Paul Laurence Dunbar

k" during a period of widespread racial discrimination in the United States. Why might the wearers of the mask not want people to see their pain?