Remembering MLK's Dream and the Brown Paper Bag Test: Light or Dark?

The legacy of the Brown Paper Bag Test

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a holy day in Black Run America (BRA) that surpasses Christmas in theological importance.

We have discussed MLK before here at SBPDL and today pay respects to Dr. King's memory and his imploring to judge "one by the content of their character, not the color of their skin."

Perhaps its fate that on a day when the Atlanta Journal Constitution publishes a story on the highly political King memorial service (where the Arizona shooting kept creeping into the "peace" narrative), a shooting was reported on that oh-so-dangerous road, Martin Luther King Drive:

Atlanta police are at the scene of a reported shooting at 3050 Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, SW.

According to police, someone called 911 saying that a man had been shot inside a store. Atlanta police told the AJC that officers have been unable to find a victim at this time.

The West Ridge shopping center is listed at that address. Wayfield and Family Dollar stores are at that location.

Around the country streets named after Dr. King have a tendency to deviate from his message of peace and non-violence. But it is in the continued reliance on the Brown Paper Bag Test (BPBT) that we find the complete repudation of his message of judging by character and the reliance of judging 100 percent by skin color.

What is the BPBT?:

When slavery ended, light-skinned blacks established social organizations that barred darker ex-slaves. Elite blacks of the early 20th century were fair-skinned almost to the person. Even today, most blacks in high positions have fair skin tones, and most blacks who do menial jobs or are in prison are dark. Believe it or not, popular black magazines, such as Ebony as Essence, prefer light-skinned models in their beauty product ads.

In his 1996 book The Future of the Race, Henry Louis Gates Jr., chairman of the Afro-American studies department at Harvard, described his encounter with the brown paper bag when he came to Yale in the late 1960s, when skin-tone bias was brazenly practiced: "Some of the brothers who came from New Orleans held a "bag party.' As a classmate explained it to me, a bag party was a New Orleans custom wherein a brown paper bag was stuck on the door.


"Anyone darker than the bag was denied entrance. That was one cultural legacy that would be put to rest in a hurry - we all made sure of that. But in a manner of speaking, it was replaced by an opposite test whereby those who were deemed "not black enough' ideologically were to be shunned. I was not sure this was an improvement."

The problem of the BPBT has been persistent in the Black narrative in both the United States, Haiti, and Africa for too long and appears whenever the pernicious idea of "being authentically Black" rears its ugly head, throwing gasoline upon Dr. King's legacy and threatening to finally provide the spark to send it up in flames.

Black people survive by positioning themselves as a monolithic entity and any discord or rancor within that community - though Black-on-Black is a problem of tremendous proportions - threatens that familial view of a people united in ethnic solidarity.

One should be aware that the idea behind the BPBT is never going to leave us:

A twitter hashtag is waging a harsh colorism battle over the Internet.

Club promotors in Columbus, Ohio were inspired by twitter hashtags "#teamlightskin" and "#teamdarkskin" and decided to create a party themed around skin tone differences. The flyer claims that the event is the "most anticipated party of the year" and will be held on January 21st, a few days after the Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday.


The flier made its round over Twitter and Facebook yesterday under the hashtag #lightskinvsdarksin and has begun to receive a national backlash.


Young Truph wrote, "This event might be the most popular failed event ever."


"The media is telling us white is beautiful but naw we gotta add our own spin on it and degrade ourselves," PoeticSongBird writes.

Many believe that once humanity has reached a more tenable and palatable hue, when every person alive has the same light-brown skin that peace will spontaneously break out and we will all hold hands moving as one into the future. Roles for Black actresses will be plentiful then!

Reading Roger Ebert's review of the forgettable 2002 film Time Machine one gets the idea of what the typical Disingenuous White Liberal (DWL) mind believes will come to fruition:

The Morlocks evolved underground in the dark ages after the moon's fall, and attack on the surface by popping up through dusty sinkholes. They hunt the Eloi for food. The Eloi are an attractive race of brown-skinned people whose civilization seems modeled on paintings by Rousseau; their life is an idyll of leafy bowers, waterfalls and elegant forest structures, but they are such fatalists about the Morlocks that instead of fighting them off, they all but salt and pepper themselves.

We at Stuff Black People Don't Like would like to live in a society where the "content of character" is the defining way to judge someone, but the "color of one's skin" is the manner in which all white people are judged in Black Run America (BRA). All white people are viewed as being privileged for having white skin, regardless of their station in life.

All white people, even if one is the most devoted follower of DWL political, progressive philosophy or even if they are the personfication of Stuff White People Like white person, will be seen as a potential "racist" in the eyes of Black people. Certainly a beneficiary of white privilege.

We know how untouchable whites are depicted: Omar Thornton's story showed us this; the Tuscon shooting and reaction by the DWL media showed us this; and every day that brings us one step closer to the mythical utopia of browned-skinned humans shows us this.

America will never be a land where Dr. King's vision could be implemented, because Black people will never stop discriminating against those who can't pass the BPBT. Those who act white and become the token Black are treated even worse.

The history of Haiti is littered with the blood of both whites (who were slaughtered) and mulatto's (who were slaughtered shortly thereafter) by darker skinned Black people. Guess they failed the BPBT?

 It was written that the color-line would be the issue of 20th century. That person was wrong: it will be the primary issue of the 21st century, though we steadfastly refuse to talk about yet.

#341. Jersey Shore

Few shows resonate with the general public like the ones broadcast on Music Television (MTV). Consider the incredible popularity of Real World, a reality show in its 24 season that puts diverse young adults into a remarkably beautiful home and merely rolls the camera as the drama unfolds.

Black people love these shows, because Token Blacks appear in each season and bring a semblance of peace to the show and act as the beacon of morality.

However, one show is currently airing on MTV that Black people find befuddling, for it appears to be a show about white people, yet curiously, the white people have a rather dark tint to their skin that can’t be explained away by prolonged exposure to tanning beds.

Yes, SBPDL is bringing up Jersey Shore, a show so incredibly mind-numbing that one finds illumination in the commercials between each episode:

Jersey Shore is a reality television series on MTV that follows eight housemates spending their summer on the New Jersey Shore. The show was filmed in August 2009 in a summer share in Seaside Heights but was also filmed in other towns such as Toms River and Neptune. It follows the eight housemates in a Real World-type style while they live, work and party at the Jersey Shore. The show debuted amid large amounts of controversy regarding the use of the words "Guido/Guidette", portrayals of Italian-American stereotypes and scrutiny from locals because the cast members are not residents from the area.

Americans of Italian descent have found the show incredibly offensive, for the varying personalities on the show all reflect certain aspects of Italian-American subculture that the gatekeepers of Italian refinement wish to be kept secret:

“The show plays upon the stereotype of the guido, prompting criticism from groups such as the National Italian American Foundation,^[62][63] UNICO National,^[64] and the Order Sons of Italy in America^[64] for using "ethnic slurs, violence and poor behavior to marginalize and stereotype Italian-Americans".^[3][64] Prior to the premiere of the show UNICO asked MTV to cancel the show because of the apparent play on stereotypes from the promos.^[65] UNICO National President Andre DiMino said that the behavior in the promos is offensive and stereotype-promoting and that "MTV is using very pejorative terms, 'Guido' and 'Guidette,' to promote a program and as a corporation that is not correct."^[66] After the show premiered, UNICO National claims they "can't keep up with the volume of calls" from "outraged" Italian Americans.^[67]

UNICO National President Andre DiMino said in a statement "MTV has festooned the 'bordello-like' house set with Italian flags and red, white and green maps of New Jersey while every other cutaway shot is of Italian signs and symbols. They are blatantly as well as subliminally bashing Italian-Americans with every technique possible. ... (The cast members) are an embarrassment to themselves, their heritage and their families.^[64]"

Linda Stasi, an Italian-American New York Post columnist, criticized MTV saying that Jersey Shore is a show "...in which Italian-Americans are stereotyped (clearly at the urging of its producer) into degrading and debasing themselves -- and, by extension, all Italian-Americans -- and furthering the popular TV notion that Italian-Americans are gel-haired, thuggish, ignoramuses with fake tans, no manners, no diction, no taste, no education, no sexual discretion, no hairdressers (for sure), no real knowledge of Italian culture and no ambition beyond expanding steroid-and silicone-enhanced bodies into sizes best suited for floating over Macy's on Thanksgiving.”

Wait, what exactly is a guido?:

Guido is a slang term for a working class urban Italian American. The guido stereotype is multi-faceted. Primarily, it is used as a demeaning term towards Italian Americans, as the word guido is derived from either the Italian proper name Guido or a conjugation of the Italian verb guidare.

Yet, all the fuss over the continued denigration of Italians on Jersey Shore is lost when one views the show, for the participants appear to have incredibly dark skin that shockingly might not pass the paper bag test.

Some of the individuals of Italian descent appear to be light-skinned Black people and their cultural predilections appear to coincide with the Black ghetto norms.

Why is that? Why do these white people look Black? Well, we have the Moors who conquered Sicily to thank for that and these “Italians” on Jersey Shore all appear to have a plethora of Sicilian blood pumping through their veins:

The Arabs, who in medieval times were sometimes called "Saracens" or "Moors," have been identified since antiquity (in Assyrian records dated to circa 850 BC), but until the Middle Ages they were not unified as a people. In the Early Middle Ages, it was Islam that united the Arabs and established the framework of Arab law. Initially, most Muslims were Arabs, and during the Arab rule of Sicily their Islamic faith was closely identified with them. (Even today, many principles believed to be tenets of Islam are, in fact, Arab practices unrelated to Muslim ethics.)

The rapid growth of Arab culture could be said to parallel the dissemination of Islam. Except for some poetry, the first major work of literature published entirely in Arabic was the Koran (Quran), the holy book of Islam, and one may loosely define Arabs by the regions where Arabic was spoken in the Middle Ages and afterwards. Arabs were a Semitic people of the Middle East. The Berbers of northwest Africa and the Sahara were not Arabs, though many converted to Islam, adopted Arabic as their language and assimilated with Arab society. Though most parts of Sicily were conquered by Arabs, certain areas where settled by people who, strictly speaking, were Muslim Berbers. Like many Berbers, some Arabs were nomadic.

Wait, you may be wondering, what does this mean? Simply put, genetic evidence through DNA sequencing shows that modern-day Italians of Sicilian descent carry an abnormally large amount of African mtDNA and more so, genetic evidence from the Y chromosome- lineage in Sicily confirms the presence of Black ancestry.

Thus, why the Jersey Shore stars lack the skin tone of white people and reflect the darker pigmentation of their great, great, great ancestors.

Perhaps, a scene from True Romance can best punctuate the reality of Sicilians and how this relates to Jersey Shore. The scene has Christopher Walken – playing a Sicilian – and Dennis Hopper discuss the history of Sicily. Hopper’s character knows he is about to die, so he lets history speak for itself:

Coccotti: Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I'm a Sicilian. And my old man was the world heavyweight champion of Sicilian liars. And from growin' up with him I learned the pantomime. Now there are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give him away. A guy has seventeen pantomimes. A woman's got twenty, but a guy's got seventeen. And if you know 'em like ya know your own face, they beat lie detectors to hell. What we got here is a little game of show and tell. You don't wanna show me nothin'. But you're tellin' me everything. Now I know you know where they are. So tell me, before I do some damage you won't walk away from.

Clifford: Could I have one of those Chesterfields now?

Coccotti: Sure.

Clifford: Got a match? Oh, don't bother. I got one.

Coccotti: ...your son, the cowboy, it's claimed, came in the room blazin', and didn't stop 'till they were pretty sure everybody was dead...

Clifford: You're Sicilian, huh?

Coccotti: Yeah, Sicilian.

Clifford: You know, I read a lot. Especially about things that have to do with history. I find that shit fascinating. Here's a fact, I don't know if you know or not, Sicilians were spawned by niggers.
Coccotti: Come again?

Clifford: It's a fact. You see, Sicilians have black blood pumpin' through their hearts. If you don't believe me, you can look it up. Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, you see, the Moors conquered Sicily. And Moors are niggers.

Coccotti: Yes...

Clifford: So you see, way back then, uh, Sicilians were like, uh, wops from Northern Italy. Ah, they all had blonde hair and blue eyes, but, uh, well, then the Moors moved in there, and uh, well, they changed the whole country. They did so much fuckin' with Sicilian women, huh? That they changed the whole bloodline forever. That's why blonde hair and blue eyes became black hair and dark skin. You know, it's absolutely amazing to me to think that to this day, hundreds of years later, that, uh, that Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. Now this...[Coccotti laughs]

Clifford: No, I'm, no, I'm quoting... history. It's written. It's a fact, it's written.
Coccotti: [laughing] I love this guy.

Clifford: Your ancestors are niggers. Uh-huh. Hey. Yeah. And, and your great-great-great-great grandmother fucked a nigger, ho, ho, yeah, and she had a half-nigger kid... now, if that's a fact, tell me, am I lying? 'Cause you, you're part eggplant.

Coccotti: Ohhh!

Clifford: Huh? Hey! Hey! Hey!

Coccotti: You're a cantaloupe. [shoots Cliff in the face]

Jersey Shore is a show that people find funny, amusing and infuriating. But Black people find it perplexing, for these purported Italians have a strange look to them that can only be explained through the prodigious copulation rates of the Moors and the white people in Sicily.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like includes Jersey Shore, for the “white people” featured in the show carry the genetic markers of their Moorish ancestry and, if the one-drop rule is in effect, are really Black people.

Thus, the strange behavior of the characters on the show shouldn’t create consternation among Americans of Italian descent, but merely infuriate Black people everywhere.Hey, are we lying?

#27. Small Butts

Kanye West is a favorite topic at SBPDL. Our fish stick loving, “no homo” espousing, George W. Bush bashing, Absolute Vodka swilling, Taylor Swift award-crashing friend is also a major lover of women who are callipygous.

Rumors of Kanye West’s love interests include Kym Kardasian, Beyonce and his current squeeze Amber Rose (a female who would pass the paper bag test).

Wait, you might be asking. Back it up. What does callipygous mean?:

“pertaining to or having finely developed buttocks; "the quest for the callipygian ideal."

Big butts. A large backside. Junk in your trunk. Black people love big butts, but you’ll be hard pressed to ever hear or read the phrase callipygous in Black people’s songs about butts. Though, Black people do love big butts, as we consult Sir Mix-a-Lot and his song Baby Got Back:

I like big butts and I can not lie
You other brothers can't deny
That when a girl walks in with an itty bitty waist
And a round thing in your face
You get sprung, wanna pull out your tough
'Cause you notice that butt was stuffed
Deep in the jeans she's wearing
I'm hooked and I can't stop staring
Oh baby, I wanna get with you
And take your picture
My homeboys tried to warn me
But that butt you got makes me so horny
Ooh, Rump-o'-smooth-skin
You say you wanna get in my Benz?
Well, use me, use me
'Cause you ain't that average groupie
I've seen them dancin'
To hell with romancin'
She's sweat, wet,
Got it goin' like a turbo 'Vette
I'm tired of magazines
Sayin' flat butts are the thing
Take the average black man and ask him that
She gotta pack much back
So, fellas! (Yeah!) Fellas! (Yeah!)
Has your girlfriend got the butt? (Hell yeah!)
Tell 'em to shake it! (Shake it!) Shake it! (Shake it!)
Shake that healthy butt!
Baby got back!

This song is beloved by Black people as well as white people, and yet it hints at a general truth that most people find unnerving. Black people have and Black men love big butts. Some Black people have large butts because they fail to pass on seconds, but others have them because that evil Mendel might have been correct in his theories:

(Gregor Mendel) He came to three important conclusions from these experimental results,

• that the inheritance of each trait is determined by "units" or "factors" that are passed on to descendents unchanged
• that an individual inherits one such unit from each parent for each trait
• that a trait may not show up in an individual but can still be passed on to the next generation.

A former NFL commentator – no less a scientific mind then Mendel – Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, spent years watching Black people compete in professional football and formed this interesting hypothesis:

"On Jan. 15, 1988, Rather himself aired video shot that afternoon at Duke Zeibert's restaurant in Washington, D.C., featuring Snyder explaining why he thought African-Americans excelled in sports.

"The black is the better athlete," The Greek said. "And he practices to be the better athlete, and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started."

In Africa, Black people of some of the indigenous tribes have gluts that would make Beyonce or other women that Sir-Mix-a-Lot canonized in his early 1990s song quite jealous of and would drive your average Black man into a fit of adolescent joy, thanks to Steatopygia:

"...is a high degree of fat accumulation in and around the buttocks. The deposit of fat is not confined to the gluteal regions, but extends to the outside and front of the thighs, forming a thick layer reaching sometimes to the knee.

This development constitutes a genetic characteristic of the Khoisan. It is especially prevalent in the women of this tribe, but also occurs to a lesser degree in the males. In most ethnic groups of Homo sapiens, females tend to exhibit a greater propensity to adipose tissue accumulation in the buttock region as compared with males. It has also been observed among the Pygmies of Central Africa and the Onge-tribe of the Andaman Islands. Among the Khoisan, it is regarded as a sign of beauty: it begins in infancy and is fully developed by the time of the first pregnancy. It is often accompanied by the formation known as elongated labia (labia minora that may extend as much as 4 inches outside the vulva). This was historically known as the "hottentot apron".

Steatopygia would seem to have been a characteristic of a population which once extended from the Gulf of Aden to the Cape of Good Hope, of which stock Khoisan and Pygmies are remnants. While the Khoisan afford the most noticeable examples of its development, it occurs in other parts of Africa, and occurs even more frequently among male Basters than among Khoikhoi women. It is also observed among females of Andamanese Negritos."

Some Black women in Africa desire big butts so much that they augment them with injections:

“Bobaraba! It means “big bottom,” and it's a hit song and butt-shaking dance phenom sweeping the Ivory Coast, the BBC reports. In fact, some women in the west African nation are so caught up in bobaraba-mania that a black market of “bottom enhancers” has emerged, targeting those who want more junk in the trunk."

The efficacy of the treatments, sold as injections or balms with no ingredients listed, is highly questionable, and some local medical officials are concerned about possible dangers.”

Rap videos, though they have gone soft, now are a mere parade of thick-souled sistas gyrating in swimsuits, with young Black men dancing around them doing their best to dispel rumors of “no homo” and reinforcing the notion of liking big butts.

So, if Black people find big butts desirable, on both the continent of Africa where they spent hundreds of thousands of years evolving and in the United States, where they have spent the last 400 years, this must prove Mendel correct.

Stuff Black People Don’t Like, by the powers of inherited traits and genetics invested in Black people, includes small butts for Black people are predisposed for loving big butts. Sir-Mix-a-Lot did the world a favor when he sang about the advantages of large butts in the eyes of Black people, as he provided us all with a glimpse into the mind of the Black man.

#69. The Brown Paper Bag Test

Black people would like the world to believe that they truly are a universal brotherhood representing peace, tolerance and hope.

A Black man was just elected President of the United States running largely as the candidate who promoted change and tolerance. Black people voted overwhelming for him - 96 percent of Black voters nationwide voted for Barack Hussein Obama - giving the impression that Black people have a monolithic view on everything. However, this view is wrong when looking at the history of Black people, from Haiti to Black on Black crime in America.

Worse though for Black people, is the Brown Paper Bag Test. Black people do not like to talk about this sordid historical reminder that Black people can be prejudicial, because it is a well known fact that only White people can be racist and bigoted.

The Brown Paper Bag Test is said to have originated in slave days, and the impetus behind it was that light skinned Black people were more favorable than dark skinned Black people:

"According to an article written by Audrey Elisa Kerr, an associate English professor at Southern Connecticut State University, light-skinned slaves-particularly women-were considered "gentler, kinder, more handsome, smarter, and more delicate" than darker-skinned slaves."

Black people not only encountered racism from White people in the 19th century and 20th century, but from light-skinned Black People as well. The article continues:

"Washington, D.C., once played a large role in the dark-skin/light-skin game. Because slavery did not have such an economic impact in the District, many free blacks preferred to reside in the area. In the mid-19th century, barbershops began accommodating only light-skinned black men.

Not only was race a factor, but skin tone became one. Churches, schools and various organizations utilized the paper bag test for social verification. There were also multitudes of brown bag parties, clubs, and social circles."

Bill Maxwell, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times decries the problem of the Brown Paper Bag Test as 'colorism', writing:

"Elite blacks of the early 20th century were fair-skinned almost to the person. Even today, most blacks in high positions have fair skin tones, and most blacks who do menial jobs or are in prison are dark. Believe it or not, popular black magazines, such as Ebony as Essence, prefer light-skinned models in their beauty product ads."

Black people are rightly appalled by this historical blip in their clean record of racial bias or hatred, but the record clearly indicated that Black people discriminate against each other, based on the lighter skin pigmentation of some Blacks compared to the higher level of melanin in others.



Henry Louis Gates, a Black professor, tells a story of the Brown Paper Bag Test:

"Some of the brothers who came from New Orleans held a "bag party.' As a classmate explained it to me, a bag party was a New Orleans custom wherein a brown paper bag was stuck on the door. Anyone darker than the bag was denied entrance

The Brown Paper Bag Test is included in Stuff Black People Don't Like for reasons that should now be fairly obvious: Black people are immune from the charge of racism or holding negative view of other races. The Brown Paper Bag Test would prove otherwise.