What's the "paper bag test"?

[hoosier]

I'm just curious. This is being discussed on a hazing forum:

"AKA's who pledged in the 1970's admit that the paper bag test existed."

[Senusret I]

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."

From:

"The paper bag test"

By BILL MAXWELL, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 31, 2003

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/08/31/Co...bag_test.shtml

Found by simply googling "paper bag test."

Google: Making average people smarter one search at a time.

[OrangeMoon]

Originally posted by Senusret I


Google: Making average people smarter one search at a time.

LOL

[navane]

Originally posted by Senusret I

"The paper bag test"

.....Kelly

[RACooper]

Wow... lot of guys in the chapter would pass... but then again more would fail...

Nice to see that an arbitratry standard was set.. one that didn't fly in the face of the reasons for these GLOs founding

[moe.ron]

Originally posted by Senusret I
Google: Making average people smarter one search at a time.

Have you been Googled?

[AKA_Monet]

Originally posted by RACooper
Nice to see that an arbitratry standard was set.. one that didn't fly in the face of the reasons for these GLOs founding

Given the ideology of the time, the more whiter, the better... It opened doors of gradual acceptance from the white community abroad... That is an ugly fact in time, but it is what happened... And not just in my Sorority, but I have found out in several others, too...

And not just only in sororities and fraternities, but at historically Black Colleges and Universities too... You had to submit a picture with your application... If you blew the top off of tests, then they might have accepted you if you did not pass the paper back test... But if you had little, then, you did not get accepted...

That is why many darker skinned African Americans attended northern and western universities in quickly after University of Alabama was tripping in the 1960s... Then when the predominantly white institutions realized that some of these darker skinned African American men could kick ass in sports, they accepted them with full support that put the HBCU's immediately at a monetary disadvantage...

Resurgence of HBCU attended did not occur until Spike Lee and Bill Cosby highlighted these universities...

The rest is history...

[Jill1228]

Senusret I, I knew I liked you for some reason!
I woulda failed the paperbag test with flying colors

Originally posted by Senusret I
Google: Making average people smarter one search at a time.

[Tom Earp]

Damn, when are people going to get over this type of thing!

I as a white person have to work on getting a tan (Darker) and I am like a bunch of White Folks!

But as a Black, I have a natural tan.

The Human Species of the Animal Kingdom are without a doubt the stupidist of The Kingdom!

JillyBean, NO, I will still not go on a Rollar Coaster Ride! Sitting at a Cocktail Lounge, Would that work for You?

Plastic sacks seem to be in vouge, now where does that put everything?

[Senusret I]

Originally posted by Tom Earp
Damn, when are people going to get over this type of thing!

Tom, buddy.....

We got over it. Trust me.

[Tom Earp]

Cannot We only Hope!