Life Under the Veil: Homicide in Black America Before, During, and After the Drop in US Crime

Abstract W.E.B. DuBois, in his 1903 collection of writings entitled The Souls of Black Folk, describes what he calls “The Veil,” which succinctly sums up the deadly and adverse experiences of African Americans in the US. With DuBois contemplations of a Veil under which US Blacks alone live and die as context, this paper takes a look at the modern condition of African Americans in the US, whether they continue to exist within DuBois Veil in modern times (twentieth and twenty-first centuries), and if so, to what extent. As a routine examination and inspection of the condition of Blacks in the US, focus is placed on black lives lost, beginning with an appraisal of their size in the US population overtime, and in comparison with other racial and ethnic groups in the US. US census data, health data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and crime data collected from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are examined to construct a composite of the condition of contemporary Blacks in the US as compared to other groups in the US, focusing attention specifically on the rates at which their lives are lost compared to others through infant mortality, low fertility rates, abortion, and high rates of homicide. This analysis concludes with a look at death from homicide before, during, and after the post-1990s drop in the crime rate.