Paper Bag Party - Twentieth Century

Twentieth Century

From 1900 until about 1950 in the larger black neighborhoods of major American cities, "paper bag parties" are said to have taken place. Some organizations used the "brown paper bag" principle as a test for entrance. People at many churches, fraternities and nightclubs would take a brown paper bag and hold it against a person's skin. If a person was lighter or the same color as the bag, he or she was admitted. People whose skin was not lighter than a brown paper bag were denied entry.

There is, too, a curious color dynamic that sadly persists in our culture. In fact, 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. The brown bag criterion survives as a metaphor for how the black cultural elite quite literally establishes caste along color lines within black life. On my many trips to New Orleans, whether to lecture at one of its 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 at work among black folk. The cruel color code has to be defeated by our love for one another. —Michael Eric Dyson, excerpt from Come Hell or High Water.

This is one of the ways that blacks with European ancestry (so called 'High-Yellow Negroes' or Creoles in Louisiana) attempted to isolate and distinguish themselves from those who were mostly African.

Even in contemporary American society, psychological studies have shown African-American and white participants both demonstrate colorism, in which they perceive light-skinned blacks to be smarter, wealthier, and happier than those of darker skin.