Black Americans also mask to mute racial difference in white spaces

Evidence

African Americans, particularly those who have to work and live in predominantly white spaces, also engage in masking. We try to manage or mute any recognizable differences between others and ourselves. We may refuse to wear braids or dreadlocks. We might change how we talk in front of white people. I have even found myself laughing at an off-color joke in order to avoid appearing overly sensitive about racial matters (only to beat myself up afterward for doing so). In each instance, we put on a mask. We manage our own sense of difference by working hard to get others to think of us as normal or as like them. And in doing so we push the reality of racial inequality into the shadows, because we try to avoid the subject altogether. This happens as blacks and whites encounter each other—wherever we happen to meet. — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black, 163