Where and when I went to school as a kid, Brown paper bags had only two uses related to school.
When we became too sophisticated to carry lunch boxes, we preferred the more adult use of brown paper bags to carry our lunches.
The second use was to cover our textbooks to keep the covers protected so as to prolong the lives of the books. We were taught the skill in the first grade, a skill that many kids today would be amazed with if their parents and grandparents covered a book to dazzle them. Grocery bags had a second life this way if they weren’t reused as trash bags.
Although the nuns objected to any doodling on these book covers, it was preferable to adorning the books themselves with primitive artwork.
And when the covers needed to be replaced, another paper bag was recycled.
It was only when I temporarily moved to the South West that I learned there was a third use for brown paper bags in the school experiences of others.
The Brown Paper Bag Test compared an individual’s skin tone to the color of a brown paper bag. It was a way to determine whether or not an individual could have certain privileges, could join in certain school activities, or be place in the better classes if their skin color matched or was lighter than a brown paper bag.
Sadly it was not a test used only by whites, but by many African-American social institutions such as sororities, fraternities, and churches.
In the days of slavery, mixed-race children of white fathers were often given privileges ranging from more desirable work, apprenticeships, formal education, allocation of property, or even freedom. African Americans saw that those having a skin color closer to that of Whites benefited from this and came to accept that privilege comes with having light skin in America. The lighter the skin the better the social and economic advantages.
And this carried on into the 20th century.
A form of it is being applied by Trump in deciding how truly American someone is.
Yes, there will be his defenders who claim he is not a racist because of all the pictures of him with Black people, but those people are celebrities that enhanced his own image. He hugged them like he hugs the flag and uses the troops for his own self aggrandizement. They are not the Black people Trump and his father refused to rent to or sell property to, and against whom Trump’s father worked as a member of the KKK.
Nor are they the Central Park Five that Trump wanted subjected to the death penalty and whose exoneration brought out no comment from him about the matter except to say that there were good people on both sides. An odd claim as on one side you had innocent youths and on the other the people who framed them.
And he was really adamant that Obama, being Black, could not possibly be American
Over the weekend he tweeted,
One should avoid taking this drug with nitrates and find out for more canadian pharmacy cialis nitric oxide are enhanced, which further increases the blood flow to penis that helps men to maintain erection. TONGKAT ALI – A traditional herb that is found in the mountain forests of Korea, Northeastern China and Russia. shop viagra online A medicated libido pill for men cheap cialis viagra cute-n-tiny.com generally has a dosage that may last a few weeks (only if a man has moderate ED). Ask the doctor if the dosage can be altered to lower purchase viagra online value or even you ask for any alternative way of treatment. “So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run.
“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
He was referring to The Squad, the Four liberal freshman congresswomen, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, three of them born in the USA and one a refugee from Somalia who arrived here more than 20 years ago and has been an American citizen for almost 20 years.
One has to wonder if Trump inadvertently revealed his assessment of his own administration when he refers to a country “whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all),” as he is telling these Congesswomen elected by voters in the United States of America to go back where they came from.
These four women fall under Maya Angelou’s
“WE ARE… MIDNIGHT BLACK, CHESTNUT BROWN, HONEY BRONZED, CHOCOLATE COVERED, COCOA DIPPED.”
But, for some odd reason, they are not really American to Trump.
In 1993 when he opposed a Casino in Connecticut, one that has outlasted his own and was doing better than his while it was open, he gave testimony before the Congressional Subcommittee on Native American Affairs, in which he claimed of Pequot Indians in attendance,
“They don’t look like Indians to me and they don’t look like Indians to Indians,”
On his opposition to Elizabeth Warren he announced,
“I can’t call her Pocahontas. She doesn’t qualify. … I’ve been saying it for a long time. I’ve been saying it for a year and a half. I said, ‘I have more Indian blood than she does (Warren’s DNA test said she was between 1/64th and 1/1024th Native American which although not a lot, is more than none), and I have none.’ I can’t use the name Pocahontas, but if you don’t mind, I will anyway. We got to keep her down.”
Because using an Indian name is a put down?
Obviously for Trump, it is not who you are, but what you look like.
Perhaps Trump will reinstate the brown bag test to determine who is a citizen and who is not.