Brown Paper Bag Test

If you thought that discrimination is limited to racism, or to white versus colored people alone, an impression one might be forgiven to have in light of the overwhelming attention to the racism from white people of European descent towards black people of African descent, then this post is for you. Of course, the rest of you are invited and encouraged to read this colorful post as well ;-)

_{Image by mmi9 - source: Pixabay}

As an introduction, let me tell a little something about myself, so you may be aware why I have a somewhat unique perspective on the whole question on discrimination and racism. I was born in the late 1960s in a little country called Suriname. As Suriname was a colony of the Netherlands, technically I was born on Dutch ground. You see, Suriname was made independent (on paper) only in 1975, and by then my parents already took me with them to The Netherlands; yes, the Dutch, alongside other western European peoples like the British, Spanish and Portuguese, were busy little folks in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, and my Dutch and American readers might recall from their history lessons that "New York" was once called "New Amsterdam"... America's unstoppable drive to adhere to its image as the de facto "frontier nation" and to keep acting out its deep seeded belief in "Manifest Destiny" might be seen in a different light when you realize that it is in fact founded by those western Europeans who made a living from colonialism, slavery and slave trade.

My father was a creole, that is from mixed European and African descent and had all the outer characteristics associated with people from African descent, including the black frizzy hair and black eyes; only his skin had a slightly lighter shade of brown because of his European ancestors on his father's side. His mother, my grandmother, was black as the night, and his father, my grandfather, was light skinned with fair hair. On my mother's side things were even more "complicated"; she herself had a very light brown skin, sleek black hair and dark brown, almost black eyes. Her ancestry contained all kinds of nationalities and ethnicities, from African to Chinese, Indonesian and Javanese. So, when I was born to two parents with black hair, black eyes and brown skin, they were both startled and intensely happy to see that I had genuinely white skin, blond hair and light blue eyes. Yep, as a little boy I was a typical example of the Nazi conception of a master race, and what's flabbergasting to me is, as I learned later in life, I was literally paraded around in Paramaribo, Suriname's capital city, as a trophy by my mother, aunts and grandmother from father's side who took care of me during my first three years on this planet. I literally was the talk of the town and admired everywhere by everyone for the lightness of my complexion, the blueness of my eyes and the fairness of my sleek hair...

When I became older, I lost the fair hair; it gradually became darker and ended up as medium light brown. That was before I lost most of it altogether ;-) My eyes became a mixture of light green and light brown. But my skin has remained white. Genetics is a funny thing, as we now know, what my parents couldn't have known when I was a baby, that some characteristics embedded in DNA sometimes stay "dormant" for a generation or two. My name also tells this story; my first name is English, which is very common and popular among black people in Suriname, but my last name, the one I inherited from my creole father, is German; somewhere way back in our family tree on my father's side lived a German plantation owner who fell in love with an almost black woman slave from African descent. And in me, for a short while, all the outer characteristics from that German slave owner came back; blond hair, blue eyes and white skin. And that made little me a miracle, adored by all the brown and black people who took care of me and showed me off wherever I was taken.

If you've read my posts, you know I really don't like to talk about my personal life, I don't do that very often and usually stick to talking about generalities, hopefully in a rational and understandable manner. However, the subject of racism and discrimination on the basis of skin color is very near to my heart, and the rising racial tensions worldwide and in America in particular, under the neoliberalism induced resurgence of fascistoid ideologies, has driven me to give you this personal account. This personal history and the history of my family, as well as the history of western European colonialism and slavery, have shaped not only myself but many black people whose ancestors were transported around the world to do their white masters' bidding. I now know why so many black people, black women mostly, from my parents' generation were so eager to make their skin appear as light as humanly possible; they literally bought creams and other "medicines" to lighten their complexion. Think back to Michael Jackson with this information in mind. You now understand, I hope, why little African American girls, when given the choice between a black and a white Barbie doll, overwhelmingly choose the one that's not their own skin color. We, people from African slaves' descent, suffer from an ethnic Stockholm syndrome...

And this is why there's so much discrimination in Suriname and among other black and brown people all over the world. Well, the colonial history is of course not the the only explanation as discrimination by skin color apparently goes much further than the latest European wave of slavery and colonialism, but it has certainly accentuated and exaggerated it. All the inequities we see between white and black people in the western world, are also present between light brown and dark brown people; lighter skin generally comes with better opportunities in life. Celebrities for example are almost never truly black and overwhelmingly of a light brown complexion. The "Black" in Black Lives Matter might as well be replaced with "Brown", as truly black people don't exist in the first place and to account for the many shades of brown with all their inherent and indoctrinated differences.

The discrimination among the brown people is maybe best illustrated with the Brown Paper Bag test:

The Brown Paper Bag Test in African-American oral history was a form of racial discrimination practiced within the African-American community in the 20th century, by comparing an individual's skin tone to the color of a brown paper bag. The test was allegedly used as a way to determine whether or not an individual could have certain privileges; only those with a skin color that matched or was lighter than a brown paper bag were allowed admission or membership privileges. The test was believed by many to be used in the 20th century by many African-American social institutions such as sororities, fraternities, and churches. The term is also used in reference to larger issues of class and social stratification within the African American population.
_{source: Wikipedia}

Honestly, if you listen carefully enough there's no missing the colored humor and insults among "black" people, ranging from "you're not black enough" to your mamma jokes going something like "your mother is so black that..."; watch the below linked video for one full version of that. Besides this "colorism" between brown people of all gradations, not only within communities of African descent but also in Asian communities and countries, there also exists true black on white racism by "black" people who really believe they're superior to "white" people. But let's not kid ourselves and let's not in any way equate all these kinds of racism and "colorism" to the overwhelmingly predominant racism of whites against blacks, let's stay realistic and remember the roots of the current socioeconomic arrangement of the neoliberal world economy that ultimately suppresses us all, but people of color in particular. There is no biological basis for differentiating racial groups and scientifically speaking there's only one human race; the races as we know them are but one of the many social constructs invented by those in power, that is to say the white men who've inherited that power from their white European ancestors who colonized the colored world. Racism by whites is the focus in modern discussions about racism and systemic racism, which is completely justified because of the power imbalance. So let's not forget that. In fact, the capitalism that evolved from the white colonial past is intimately connected to racism, so much so that racial capitalism is a real thing; watch the short above linked video.

Ultimately though, thinking, writing and talking about all this is making me so depressed. There simply is no natural science behind racism or colorism, it's all a result of taught behavior. And I wish we could finally rise above the centuries of indoctrination that traps us in a state of mind that leads to such horrors as African slavery, Apartheid, Segregation and the Jim Crow laws, Nazism, Japanese Imperialism, "race realism" and Eugenics. See this post as an outcry for sanity and scientific realism; let's embrace that, so we can internalize what's really important about us, human beings, in order to adjust our emotional lives accordingly. There's no reason whatsoever to fear loud black men or brown Muslims who face the east when praying to their God and messiah. Trust me, I know, as I'm one of those loud black men, I'm just packaged differently; I would pass that brown paper bag test any time, and with flying colors...

Thanks so much for visiting my blog and reading my posts dear reader, I appreciate that a lot :-) If you like my content, please consider leaving a comment, upvote or resteem. I'll be back here tomorrow and sincerely hope you'll join me. Until then, keep safe, keep healthy!

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