How does "We Wear the Mask" use a clown as a metaphor for the African-American experience in America?

As the central symbol of the poem, the titular mask signifies the performance of a certain identity as a means of survival. This performance is specifically that of contentment, positivity, and happiness: the mask creates a façade that “grins and lies.” The incongruity between the mask and the pained face behind it (“tears and sighs”) symbolizes the disconnect between performance and true identity.

Dunbar’s use of mask symbolism echoes W. E. B. Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness: as defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “a source of inward 'twoness' putatively experienced by African Americans because of their racialized oppression and disvaluation in a white-dominated society.” Dunbar’s masqueraders are the African Americans who must develop two discrete performative identities—the mask, and the face behind it—in response to the violence (“torn and bleeding hearts”), ignorance (“let the world dream otherwise”), and oppression (“oh the clay is vile [...] and long the mile”) of the white world.