For those unfamiliar, the “paper-bag test” was a tactic used by certain African-American social organizations, fraternities and even churches to keep dark-skinned people out. The saying is that if you ...

The title of Nathaniel Donnett's exhibition at the Lawndale Art Center — Paper or Plastic? — is a question commonly heard in grocery-store lines. But while Donnett draws on brown paper sacks, the ...

A young San Francisco artist's exhibit at the Museum of African Diaspora explores the issues surrounding beauty and skin color within the Black community, and it does so using a medium that was once ...

*When it comes to being a dark-skinned black woman, things are still very much the same, according Viola Davis. So much so that the idea of someone like her playing a character like Annalise Keating ...

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time shows Bessie Smith, played by Queen Latifah, administering her own reverse paper bag test to backup singers desperate to join her tour. Where the blues ...

The "paper bag test" was a once common discriminatory practice within the African-American community in which a brown paper bag was held up to someone's face to determine if they could get into ...

About US is an initiative by The Washington Post to explore issues of identity in the United States. Sign up for the newsletter. I was amused at the breathless astonishment of CNN’s anchors over the ...

UMaine graduate student Eleanor Kippling speaks about her installment of “The Brown Paper Bag Test.” Over the course of the semester so far, the art community has been the highlight of UMaine’s ...