jQuery: check if element has CSS attribute

Is there a way to check an elements parents and find the first one that has a CSS background set and then return that background value?

Something like:

var background = $('element').parents().has(css('background'));

UPDATE: This is the code I'm now using:

jQuery.fn.getBg = function(){
    var newBackground = this.parents().filter(function() {
        return $(this).css('background-color').length > 0;
    }).eq(0).css('background-color');
    $(this).css('background-color',newBackground); console.log("new background is: "+newBackground);
};