COLORISM + HISTORY
Why The Brown Paper Bag Test Still Matters
An essay about proximity to whiteness
In New Orleans, you will find Black people of every shade and hue, but few understand the cultural significance of these differences. Many of the city's upper bourgeois belong to secret societies called Krewes, where membership is tightly scrutinized. They are the ones who throw Mardi Gras parades, host grand balls, and often hold positions of power throughout the city. It wasn't until 1992 that New Orleans formally desegregated these organizations, twenty-eight years after the Civil Rights Act became law. Socially, untangling the anti-Black racism deeply entrenched in some Krewes is an ongoing struggle. Historically, some New Orleanians used the Brown Paper Bag Test to determine who could join elite clubs and festivities, codifying a system of not just racial but also color-based discrimination.
According to Georgetown sociology professor Michael Eric Dyson, “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.”
Proximity to whiteness could be measured using a brown paper bag test, a brutal display of the color-based hierarchy deriving from the chattel slavery system. The brown paper bag test…
