As I was reading through articles trying to find one for this blog, I came across a few sentences talking about a "brown paper bag test".  I wondered what that was about, and ended up finding an interesting article about it.  This article asks how would we feel if we could only associate with people who were the same color or lighter than a brown paper bag.  This idea was used dating back to the slave days and soon after they were freed.  People gradually were accepting black slaves as people, but only light dark-skinned people.  They would judge people and only accept people if they were dark, but light enough.  Many people think this judging idea still exists today.

This seems to sound ridiculous to non-judgmental people like us, but it's a big deal to some.   For blacks in the early 1900s, as if being of a different race and culture wasn't difficult enough, if they were a few shades darker than what was "acceptable" they would still be shunned, by people of the opposite race and of their own. There are all sorts of statistics of how darker black people are not as successful as lighter black people because some people still don't find it as "appealing".  To be so specific and to compare them to a brown bag really shocked me. I can't imagine looking at someone and thinking "oh, you're a tad too dark for me to talk to you".  That's just ridiculous.


http://www.thehilltoponline.com/news/the-legacy-of-the-brown-paper-bag-1.466574#.UQrdKR1baSo

When Mrs. Wren was talking about colorism, I thought it sounded interesting.  I had never heard of it and find it kind of odd that there would be racism within racism.  I want to learn more about it and see what this is all about!