The Brown Paper Bag Test

Brown Paper Bag Test was a discriminatory act within the African-American community in the United States that was based on skin color. The brown paper bag was used as a measurement to determine whether or not an individual could receive access to certain privileges; individuals were given preference if having a skin tone lighter than a brown paper bag.The test used to take place in the 20th century in many social institutions such as African-American sororities, fraternities, and churches. In addition, Brown Paper Bags were used in multi-racial social events, at which only individuals with complexions at least as light as the color of a brown paper bag were admitted. The term also refers to larger issues of class and social stratification within
In part, it relates to the tension of a slave society, in which race was used as an indicator of slave caste. Mixed-race children of white fathers were sometimes given privileges, ranging from more desirable work, apprenticeships or formal education, allocation of property, or even freedom. African Americans "contributed to colorism because they have benefited from the privilege of having a skin color closer to that of Whites and have embraced the notion that privilege comes with having light skin in America".[3]Free people of color were afforded certain social and economic advantages over darker-skinned people of color, even while suffering discrimination. According to Gordon, "light-skinned blacks formed exclusive clubs" after slavery was abolished in the United States.[4] Some clubs were called "Blue Vein Societies", suggesting that if an individual 's skin was light enough to show the blue cast of veins, they had more European ancestry (and therefore higher social standing.)[4] Such discrimination resulted in resentment among African Americans with darker complexions. According to Henry Louis Gates Jr., in his book The Future of the Race (1996), the practice of the brown paper bag test may have originated in New Orleans, LA, where there was a substantial third class of free people of color dating from the French colonial era.[5] The test was related to ideas of beauty,
In fact, New Orleans invented the brown paper bag party — usually at a gathering in a home — where anyone darker than the bag attached to the door was denied entrance. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life. On my many trips to New Orleans, whether to lecture at one of its universities or colleges, to preach from one of its pulpits, or to speak at an empowerment seminar during the annual Essence Music Festival, I have observed color politics at work among black folk. The cruel color code has to be defeated by our love for one another. —Michael Eric Dyson, excerpt from Come Hell or High