DuBois explores what it feels like to be a problem as a black person in America. He recounts his own childhood experience of being excluded from a group due to his race, which made him realize he was seen as different and separated by an invisible "veil" from white people. Similarly, freed slaves after the Civil War felt walled off from society. DuBois describes their situation and struggle to merge their identity as Americans with their identity as black people in a still racist world.