The Brown Paper Bag Test in African-American oral history is a form of racial discrimination practiced in African-American communities by comparing the color of a person's skin with the color of a brown paper bag. The test is supposedly used as a way to determine whether a person can have certain privileges; only those who have suitable or lighter skin tones than brown paper bags are allowed in or membership rights. This test is believed by many to be used in the 20th century by many African-American social institutions such as college associations, fraternities, and churches. The term is also used in reference to the larger issues of class and social stratification in the African American population. Audrey Elisa Kerr documents confidence in this practice, but does not verify whether it is actually used.
Video Brown Paper Bag Test
Color discrimination
Privilege has long been associated with skin color in the African-American community. This is related to individual slavery based on race. Children of mixed fathers of white dads are sometimes given privileges ranging from more desirable work, apprenticeship or formal education, the allocation of property, or even freedom from slavery. African Americans "contribute to staining because they benefit from the privilege of having a skin tone closer to whites and have accepted the idea that privilege comes with bright skin in America". Lighter-skinned people are given certain social and economic advantages over dark people, even in discrimination. According to Gordon, "thin-skinned blacks form an exclusive club" after slavery was abolished in the United States. Some clubs are called "Blue Vein Societies", suggesting that if a person's skin is light enough to show a blue veins cast, they have more European ancestors (and, therefore, higher social standing.) Such discrimination is hated by Americans Africa with darker skin. According to Henry Louis Gates Jr., in his book The Future of the Race (1996), the practice of brown paper bag tests may have originated in New Orleans, LA, where there is a substantial third of the colony-free color dating class France. This test is related to beauty ideas, where some people believe that lighter skin and more European features, in general, more interesting.
From 1900 to about 1950, the "paper bag party" was said to have occurred in the neighborhood of large American cities with a high concentration of African Americans. Many churches, fraternities, and nightclubs use the principle of "brown paper bags" as entrance exams. The people in this organization will take a brown paper bag and hold it on someone's skin. If someone is lighter than a bag, he is accepted. People whose skin is not lighter than brown paper bags are denied entry.
There are also, strange dynamic colors that survive in our culture. In fact, New Orleans found a brown paper bag party - usually at a meeting at home - where anyone darker than a bag attached to the door was refused entry. The criteria of a brown bag survive as a metaphor for how the elite of black culture literally build caste along the color line in black life. In my many trips to New Orleans, whether to give a lecture at one of the 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 in the workplace among black people. The cruel color code must be defeated by our love for each other. - Michael Eric Dyson, quote from Come Hell or High Water .
Historically black colleges and universities use brown paper bag tests as a way to criticize candidates for admission. A person's skin tone can affect whether they are accepted at the top school. For example, Audrey Elisa Kerr refers to a college that requires applicants to post personal photos. Kerr mentions how this practice occurred at the popular HBCU, Howard University. Arnold told Kerr a story about the young woman at Howard. Dr. Arnold had heard color was one of the factors when he got into Howard. Discrimination is also practiced by fraternities and associations, whose members elect themselves to others like them, generally reflecting partial European ancestors. The multi-racist peoples who had freed before the American Civil War attempted to distinguish themselves from the mass of liberated men after the war, who appeared to be largely of African descent and restricted to slavery.
Maps Brown Paper Bag Test
Colors for centuries
African African and white male offspring are often born free, because their mother's status as a slave and free, regardless of color. A law, established in Virginia and other colonies in the 17th century, dictated that the legal status of these children would be determined by their mother, not by their father, contrary to the tradition of common English law. These free breeds became established, with descendants moving to the border areas of Virginia, North Carolina and west when the area opened. Some prominent Americans are descended from these early free families, for example, Ralph Bunche, who serves as ambassador to the United Nations.
At the beginning of the 18th century, travelers commented on the variations in color and features seen in slaves in Virginia, because European ancestors were very clear. The bright-skinned slaves, some of whom are the offspring of the masters and their sons, are sometimes given better care in the plantation, with housework within their master's house, including as friends or helpers to his legitimate children. Some of them are educated, or at least allowed to learn to read. Sometimes his master may arrange for an apprenticeship for the son of a mixed race and release him upon completion, especially in the first two decades after the American Revolution, when many slaves were freed in Upper South. In this region, from the Revolution through 1810, the percentage of free colored people increased from 1 to over 10 per cent. In 1810, 75% of blacks in Delaware were free.
New African Africans imported and African-Americans with less visible European forebears used in hard work in the field, and abuse more often in the fields. As tensions about the slave uprising increased in the nineteenth century, slave states imposed more restrictions, including prohibitions on educating slaves and slave movements. These slaves can be punished for trying to learn to read and write.
Particularly in Louisiana, Creoles colors have long consisted of a third class during the years of slavery. They have reached a level of literacy and high sophistication under French and Spanish powers, being educated, taking the name of a father or white lover, and often accepting property from whites involved with their families. Many become craftsmen, property owners, and sometimes slave owners themselves. Unlike in the Upper South, where African American free Africa varies greatly in appearance, the free-colored people of New Orleans and Deep South tend to be light-skinned because the generations of mixed marriages with people of European descent. After the United States negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, more Americans settled in New Orleans, bringing their binary approach to society, where everyone was classified as just black or white. They began to limit the color Creoles privileges.
See also
- Black is Beautiful
- Colors
- Good hair (phrase)
- High yellow
- The Louisiana Creole people
- Mulatto
- Oktoroon
- One-Drop Rule
- Skip (race identity)
- Test pencil (South Africa)
- Quadroon
- School Daze
References
Further reading
-
Color Complex . New York: Anchor. p.Ã, 208. ISBNÃ, 978-0-385-47161-9. - Williams, Lena (1992-11-22). "The Many Shades of Bigotry". New York Times.
External links
- TEST PAPER TEST, an editorial by Bill Maxwell about blacks who discriminate against blacks, St. Petersburg Times , August 31, 2003, discusses the history of testing.
- Deep Skin Discrimination, ABC News, March 4, 2005
- Classypac
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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