As a daughter of the deep South, I am all too familiar with “The Brown Paper Bag Test.” For those of you who are unfamiliar, “The Brown Paper Bag Test,” derived from and was used by Blacks (particularly in the South) to determine if one Black person had “fair enough” skin to group them into a certain “class” of Blacks. I know…it sounds absurd, right? RIGHT! Absolutely! Nevertheless, Blacks have used this “test” to discriminate against their own time and time again.
Like I said…I am a child of the South and am sadly all too familiar with “The Brown Paper Bag Test.” Growing up, I would often here stories from elders discussing families that discriminated against their children’s choices of love interests or even friends due to their complexion. My own grandmother, a very fair-skinned Black woman, still tells the story of how she was alienated from her own paternal side of her family due to her choice to marry a brown-skinned man instead of passing for white or marrying a Black man with a lighter complexion. As troubling as this sounds, “The Brown Paper Bag Test” is still in full effect and I had a first hand look at it while visiting family over the holidays.
C’est Chic and I decided to go out on a Friday night to a friends birthday party. When we arrived there were nothing but familiar faces – many of whom we’d known from childhood or over the years. A group of us were sitting at the bar enjoying cocktails when a friend of some of the other girls’ walks into the party. A talk, dark brother (whom we’ll call Nigeria) proceeds to walk our way and stops to greet us with a very warm welcome. I’d personally never met the man but he was obviously an old friend of all the other ladies so I introduced myself.
Nigeria was friendly and generous – buying rounds of drinks for all. I must say…I was intrigued. Hell…I seem to LIVE in the dating lane these days and though Nigeria wasn’t much of a looker, he had a style and swagger about him that was reason enough to be curious. Anyways….as the night progressed, I noticed Nigeria giving me long glances and touching my shoulder or side whenever we were next to one another. Like I said, I didn’t mind because he was a friend of my friends and seemed like a nice guy. Towards the end of the night, Nigeria (whom had had quite a few cocktails himself) leans over to C’est Chic and says, “Your friend is gorgeous to me but she’s almost too dark.” In hearing this, all I could think was “What?!” I was so stunned by his comment that my mouth dropped and must have hung open for nearly a full minute. I could not believe my ears. Was this man saying that I was “almost” too brown skinned for him to consider dating? So many thoughts filled my mind but at the forefront was outrage. I was in shock because his statement just seemed to set Black people back by years! How absurd for a Black man to say that! I mean…I get having preferences. To each his own but to feel so bold as to say it out loud and in the presence of the person was just down right rude, in my opinion. On top of that was my outrage that this very dark-skinned man of African descent had the nerve to call me “too dark.” Was he serious?! He has to be 5 shades darker than me!! Even more infuriating is that there are still black people clinging to this idea that lighter skin somehow equates beauty. We should all be evolved enough to know that this is absolutely not the case. And like I said…have your preferences but the gall of you to note that I’m beautiful but nearly not worthy to date because of the shade of my skin!! So you date ugly light-skinned girls instead of beautiful brown skinned women? That’s just got stupid written all over it. And what kind of self-hate is that when you are obviously dark skinned. I could go on and on but needless to say, I was turned off instantly and attempted to tolerate his foolishness for the rest of the night without causing a stir in the group.
I can’t even articulate accurately how frustrated I was to hear his comments in 2008, the year the first Black President was elected in America. With ignorance going around like this, I can’t imagine Blacks have truly advanced as much as we give ourselves credit for.
So, I guess I didn’t pass the “test” this time and all I can say to that is…I’m Glad! I love my brown skin and wouldn’t trade it if I could. Like Tupac Shakur said, “The Darker the Flesh, The Deeper the Roots.”
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