Detroit DJ cancels party for 'light-skinned' black women. This whole melanin thing for black Americans is quite complicated, it's also quite pathological as Colorism, another third rail subtopic when it comes to race, rears its ugly head from time to time. In this case, the blowback was immediate."They said, if you was white, you'd be alright, If you was brown, stick around, But as you is black, oh brother, Get back, get back, get back."
– A 1947 blues song, "Black, Brown, and White," written by Big Bill Broonzy.
A local DJ and party promoter retreated Thursday from a plan to sponsor a bash that would let "light-skinned" black women into a downtown club for free.Barnes, btw, describes himself as dark-skinned, and didn't think his party planning was offensive in any way, stating he planned to have a 'Sexy Chocolate' party the following week, and after that a "Sexy Caramel" fete.But the "Light Skin Libra Birthday Bash" at Club APT on Woodward Avenue turned out to be a bashing — of promoter Ulysses "DJ Lish" Barnes after word of the unusual party spread on the Internet.
"I made a mistake," Barnes said. "I didn't think there would be a backlash."
Barnes, who said he's been a party promoter for six years, canceled the event.
I'm still trying to figure out how he planned to decide who got in the front door for free. Did he plan to have a brown paper bag ready to do "the test"?
"I had a good conversion with him and he understood," said Pearl Jr., founder of the Black Women's Movement in Los Angeles and the author of the book "Black Women Need Love, Too."My mom had first-hand experience with the brown paper bag nonsense, something I blogged about in my post, "Skin and the color of money.""Ignorance can't always be an excuse," she said. "Colorism is real in the black community. It's especially very degrading to dark-skinned black women."
The party's discriminating tone harkens to the day of the "brown paper bag test," which compared the complexions of blacks to a brown grocery bag before they could be admitted to social clubs and affairs, said Pearl Jr.
Her exposure to the "test" occurred in the 1950s, while living in Brooklyn, NY, she was dating a young gentleman, who was brown-skinned. She was invited to a party in the neighborhood and brought her friend to the dance. At the door, the host leaned in to my mother and said that he could not be admitted with her. She was upset and asked to step inside to discuss the matter. The host was uncomfortable that my mom didn't get the "secret signal", but brought her in (while he waited outside), and was told point blank "He doesn't pass the brown paper bag test." He was too dark, and there was to be none of that going on at this party.Generally, human beings follow natural inclinations to categorize and organize things, including people. The assignment of other humans into easy visual cubbyholes by those in the communities of color as well as the dominant culture makes it infinitely easier to give political and economic power to (or withhold it from) whole classes of people. It all spirals down into a pitiful morass of bigotry and insane systems of repression that are also accepted and perpetuated within those populations deemed racially "inferior." That it is exacerbated by the reinforcement of light skin as the epitome of beauty is particularly stinging for dark-skinned women — all over the world, I might add.
Check out the report Pigmentation and Empire: The Emerging Skin-Whitening Industry for an eye-opening look at the extremes some will go to in order to lighten their skin — often with disastrous results.
33 Responses to “The brown paper bag test is alive and well”
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Interestingly, as a very white (well, pink with burnt-orange polka dots and copious amounts of ruddy colored fur) person engaged to someone who would certainly not pass the brown paper bag test, I’ve experience a sort of inverse brown-paper bag test as well.
One time when I was visiting my fiancee after a period of absense (it’s a long-distance relationship), we overheard a few comments made by people (obviously about us) at the Kiddush luncheon following religious services to the effect of “I remember him being white, but I don’t remember him being so very white”. I guess among these (white) people it would have been a more appropriate match if I were an olive complected rather than pink-skinned caucasian?
I wonder if someone can school the guy just a little bit about the pitfalls of sorting women into categories by appearance and luring them in for his delectation. Where’s he gonna go with this next? Besides into astrology, of course. Phrenology maybe? Or, you know, cup size.
D Cup Sagittariaus Bash! Wheee!
Big Bill
That is some sweet singin and guitar picken.
Damn he’s good.
The other white kids would tease me for being too pale.
In college, I was referred to as Matt the Friendly Ghost.
Fuckers. I’m not friendly.
That is really fascinating Pam. My mom used to tell me stories about how we self-segregated by skin color back in the day (we still do it, but we are more stealth). She went to college in the 40s and joined a sorority that had the brown paper bag policy. Whenever she would take us (my sisters and me) to an alumni event, they would encourage my sisters, who are very fair with straight hair (considered “good hair” in those circles) to make sure to pledge. But they would barely acknowledge my existence (I have kinky hair and am not fair skinned). Eventually she stopped even bothering with those shitty little events (I think she just went out of habit) and discouraged us from pledging. I never bothered to do anything greek and my sisters ended up joining another, nerdier (but much cooler) sorority.
I also had the experience of walking into a beauty supply store and seeing a WALL of beauty products with such titles as “Fair and White” “Beaute de Blanco” (WTF?!) and a host of others with smiling, pale Asians pictured on the box or tube. I bet that Michael Jackson must have used one of those products. I am sure he wishes he would let himself get black and old rather than white and freaktacular.
I lived in and traveled around Asia for a few years. I still can’t get over the number of skin whitening product available in Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, etc.
Smite all D Sagittarians, saith this C Gemini!!!
An interesting thing struck me the other day when I was in the drugstore, and once the light bulb went on in my conscious mind, I’ve been noticing this sort of thing all over the place. I live in a majority-black city, so when I’m in the drugstore the majority of the customers and employees are black folks, and a lot of the magazines on the racks are those geared toward African-American people. So I’m in line, just idly scanning the magazine covers as I wait, and it suddently hits me that all the people pictured on the covers of the black-interest magazines (e.g., Essence, Ebony, Today’s Black Woman, etc.) are way way lighter-skinned than just about all the black people I’m seeing in my near vicinity. The majority of the employees in the large office I work in are African Americans, and I’d estimate about 80% of them wouldn’t pass the “brown paper bag test.” And yet I’d guess the media I see is just about reversed, with roughly 80% of the African American faces on magazines, ads, product packaging, etc being rather light-skinned people. hmmmm….
The first time I had heard of the phenomenon was on the late, great TV series Frank’s Place, starring Mr. Venus Flytrap (Tim Reid) himself.
“D Cup Sagittariaus Bash! Wheee!”
Hey now! Stop that! I resemble that remark… heh…
The assignment of other humans into easy visual cubbyholes by those in the communities of color as well as the dominant culture makes it infinitely easier to give political and economic power to (or withhold it from) whole classes of people.
I just couldn’t help but think of this little diatribe from the film Fear of a Black Hat when I read that (the actor playing one of the “three brothers” in question was on Heroes last night which put this in mind):
Interesting how the exact “people crayon” you happen to resemble can make such a large difference in how you are treated - even today, even by other people of color. I have seen this happen with kids from countries where there is a huge gradient - like Brasil - where social status tends to track with melanin saturation. Let’s just say that certain supermodels don’t end up in the slums.
I say this as someone descended from “high yaller” melungeon people who sold all their businesses and property in 1868 or so (gee, what was going on down south then??), got out the straightening irons and passed into Oregon to start anew. There were no black people in Oregon, so abracadabra! White. Amazing mobility magic, that.
I also remember the color of blackness arising in “Black Like Me”, as the white reporter made himself VERY dark to go undercover and walk a mile or two in another’s shoes.
didn’t LaShawn blog about this a while back?
Goddamnit, norbiz beats me to it once again.
That was a particularly interesting episode (especially for little suburban white girl me) because one of the characters was trying to use Frank to break the color barrier at his all-black club in New Orleans that used the paper bag test to decide who could and couldn’t be a member.
I wonder if it’s on YouTube.
Fear of a Black Hat
I had to wikipedia it. I saw the title and figured it must have been a movie about a Reform Jew who found himself stuck in a Haredi neighborhood
norbiz and Mnemosyne,
Benson had a similar episode about a club with a paper bag test — that was the first time I’d heard of it.
The unstated but depressing truth behind all this is that in the bad old days, the slave masters were in the habit of sleeping with their female property. “Light skined” blacks reflect this ancestry. It’s not something to be ashamed of, but neither ought it to be a particular source of pride . . .
The unstated but depressing truth behind all this is that in the bad old days, the slave masters were in the habit of sleeping with their female property. “Light skined” blacks reflect this ancestry. - rea
FWIW, I actually know some people from sub-Saharan Africa who might not be even as light as a brown paper bag, but come awfully close — maybe there’s some “mixed race” ancestry that I don’t know about … but not all “Black Africans” are uniformly black to begin with …
“rears its ugly head from time to time”
It’s always around.
And this is foremost a sexism issue. You dont often hear black men seriously segregate themselves this way… but look how casually women are treated as objects. This DJ Lish didnt (i bet still doesnt, really) understand what he did that was so wrong –& he didnt evolve out of a vacuum.
After 10 days in the sun, I don’t pass the brown paper bag test, either. I’ve never understood why people are so nuts about pigmentation, when a bit of sun can move all the lines.
I will smear my face with soft lanoline,
With American Girl Hand Body Lotion
With Ambi skin-lightening cream—
With pasteurized and bionised dung.
d c marechera
DAS - a lot of Tswana people are fairly light skinned, and it has nothing to do with interbreeding with Europeans - it’s a natural thing going back many generations. It’s quite striking to see a Tswana standing next to a Zulu (who are generally quite dark). There are also a large group of people in the Cape region who are light skinned as a result of interbreeding with Europeans, going back about four centuries, since the Cape was a stopover point for Portuguese and Dutch traders going to the Indies. Apartheid South Africa recognized three racial categories based on skin tone: White, Colored, and Black. The Colored category included all Asians as well as people of mixed ancestry, in part because of the large number of people in the paper-bag-ambiguous category (and in part to split the interests of the oppressed groups).
I’m not unlike Matt with the spareribs up there. One of my friends used to call me “The Corpse,” I’m so pale. Anybody wants to give me some spare melanin so we’re both a little more paper-bag coloured, let me know. I’m tired of instant sunburns, and I live at 43N latitude.
Good story.
Lisa, your mother was an AKA? IIRC, the Delta Sigma Theta sorority was founded because the AKA’s wouldn’t let darker women in. That’s always boggled me, and it’s sad that from what you’re saying, the attitude is still there.
Similarly, the Bollywood stars are way lighter than just about all of the Indo-Pak people I know. Where do they come from?
The lightness of darkskinned people on Magazine covers come from three sources. All somewhat the product of bias.
1) Makeup (Necessary in front of the strong photo/studio lights)
2) Studio and Film Lights. Camera’s need a lot of light.
3) Photo-editing
Don’t have time to read all the other comments, so maybe someone’s got there already, but–you’re absolutely right that this is a worldwide phenomenon. I’m an absurdly pale-skinned but otherwise ordinary looking white girl who moved to a prosperous city in China about a month ago. Random strangers tell me I’m pretty when I talk to them. I’m here teaching English, and in the first week of school, every single class had at least a few students who came up to tell me how “beautiful” I am. “How do you get such nice skin?” one student asked me, and I was really confused until I realized she didn’t mean skin texture, but skin color. I sometimes hear people in the street say, approvingly, “She’s so white!” when I go by (my obvious foreignness also means they assume I don’t speak the language–sadly, about half true).
Actually, it’s the one thing here that really creeps me out–the fact that just by walking around with my blond hair and white skin I’m the living embodiment of an unattainable standard. And of course the Chinese women in print ads are all much paler than average (and there are a disproportionate amount of ads featuring white women), and a huge percentage of skin care products have whitening agents in them. I’m actually wondering what I’ll do when the face cream I brought from the States runs out–god knows I need what little melanin I have!
Bits of ancient history;India was invaded from the north, and the highest caste or two would be from that ethnic group. East Asia has seen several pushes from north to south through war.
Light skin preference seems to come from a combination of middle class or better status (if you aren’t working outdoors, you can be paler) and status in terms of looking more like the ruling elite.
Which in turn explains why pale Europeans often want to tan. These days, pallor comes from being at a desk job for long hours; only those with leisure time can bake their skin, ergo a white person’s tan means wealth and power unless it takes the form of tan line’s where a worker’s skin is exposed, i.e. red-neck.
But it’s hard to understand how a DJ could NOT foresee causing offense with a light-skinned blacks theme.
As a good example of this, you can look at pictures of Tyra Banks. In various images her skin tone is all over the map, from fairly dark to almost Caucasian.
Generally speaking, with the widespread adoption of Photoshop, magazine covers are probably the last place you want to look to see what someone actually looks like. Aside from the Dove (I think) commercial that you can see online showing a model from arriving in studio to the finished product, which looks nothing like her, there are assorted artists websites out there showing the before and after work they’ve done for print magazines.
A similar situation for having a fit physique versus being, well, fatter. When most of the population consists of farmers and other manual labourers, the only people who can afford sufficient food and have the leisure time not to burn it off are the upper classes.
Like tanning, this is reversed now because people doing hard physical labour in Western countries make up a much smaller percentage of the population.
As a good example of this, you can look at pictures of Tyra Banks. In various images her skin tone is all over the map, from fairly dark to almost Caucasian.
It often has a lot to do with what or who else is in the picture. If you have a dark-skinned and a light-skinned person standing together, you have to try and come up with a middle-range lighting that may end up pushing both of their skin tones towards an extreme (ie the dark-skinned person will look darker and the light-skinned person will look lighter).
A huge amount of work has to go into lighting people in such a way that the camera can pick up the facial expressions that you would easily see if the person was right in front of you. Cameras are tricksy little buggers.
I just read the article and I find it ironic that it has been my experience that the girls from my school ostracized the lighter colored skin girls.
The other ironic thing is the report “Pigmentation and Empire: The Emerging Skin-Whitening Industry for an eye-opening look at the extremes some will go to in order to lighten their skin — often with disastrous results.” because white people risk death by melanoma to obtain darker skin.
Furthermore being a read head and fair-skinned, I had to deal with my fair share of “ginger” jokes.