""Brown sugar," of course, references the colonialist history of the Carribean and American Southeast where British, French and American plantations imported African slaves to grow sugar. "Brown sugar" thus, synechdotally equates the African people with the product of their labor." Strange. "Brown Sugar" in the context we're speaking of always meant sweet and brown. Like the phrase " the blacker the berry, the sweeter the fruit". I've heard that phrase used many times without there being any bigoted context. I think there is a bigger problem here, of being too PC. Soon everything will be described in only the most neutral of terms. Our language will not only lose its color, it will lose its flavor as well. There are simply some people who go searching for and will always find, in some obsure reference, offence in anything. I'm not saying insensitivity and bigotry doesn't happen, I'm just saying it's not always the case every time. Has anyone bothered to ask Dalinise what she thinks of all this?