CONCEPT
The Veil
Du Bois's image for the membrane that lets the dominant world look at those behind it without ever seeing them—the social technology of othering that determines, before any score is computed, who the system even bothers to see—now rebuilt, at industrial scale, as a one-way mirror in algorithmic form.
Du Bois opens The Souls of Black Folk with an image he returns to throughout: the veil. He describes being shut out from the white world by a vast veil, a membrane that lets each side glimpse the other but prevents true sight, true contact, true recognition. The veil is not a wall; walls are honest about their function. The veil is subtler: it lets the dominant world look at those behind it without ever seeing them, reducing persons to types, to problems, to a generalised darkness. The genius of his metaphor is that it locates the problem in the membrane, not in the individuals on either side. The veil is a structure maintained by institutions, habits, and technologies, and it persists even when no single person on either side intends harm. Algorithmic systems are veil-making machines, and they make veils in two opposite directions at once.
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