Obsession With Black Color Quotes

As bell hooks wrote in a 1998 essay, "Naked Without Shame," about black women's bodies and politics, "Marked by shame, projected as inherent and therefore precluding any possibility of innocence, the black female body was beyond redemption." She points out that since the time of U.S. slavery, men have benefited from positioning black women as naturally promiscuous because it absolves them of guilt when they sexually assault and rape women of color. "[I]t was impossible to ruin that which was received as inherently unworthy, tainted, and soiled," hooks wrote. Women of color, low-income women, immigrant women- these are the women who are not seen as worthy of being placed on a pedestal. It's only our perfect virgins who are valuable, worthy of discourse and worship.

He'd call him up that night. Tell him. What? That he could gut a cod while he talked about advertising space and printing costs? That he was wondering if love came in other colors than the basic black of none and the red heat of obsession?

Morally gray is not a word in our dictionary. Black is our color. Black is our song. Black is his love note to me.

I have to fight for my life because I have a black Dad and a white Mom. I am judged everywhere I go because people are too busy looking at my color. Their eyes scan me up and down as they try to figure out what I am mixed with.

29. “I have to fight for my life because I have a black Dad and a white Mom. I am judged everywhere I go because people are too busy looking at my color. Their eyes scan me up and down as they try to figure out what I am mixed with.

He’s my baby brother, and he’s a pretty cool guy. I mean, he’s got a soul-searing obsession with the color black, but other than that, he’s a pretty stand-up guy. If you don’t count the way he used to steal my colored pencils when we were little.

Don’t be afraid of aging. As the saying goes, don’t be afraid of anything but fear itself. Find “your” perfume before you turn thirty. Wear it for the next thirty years. No one should ever see your gums when you talk or laugh. If you own only one sweater, make sure it’s cashmere. Wear a black bra under your white blouse, like two notes on a sheet of music. One must live with the opposite sex, not against them. Except when making love. Be unfaithful: cheat on your perfume, but only on cold days. Go to the theater, to museums, and to concerts as often as possible: it gives you a healthy glow. Be aware of your qualities and your faults. Cultivate them in private but don’t obsess. Make it look easy. Everything you do should seem effortless and graceful. Not too much makeup, too many colors, too many accessories …  Take a deep breath and keep it simple. Your look should always have one thing left undone—the devil is in the details. Be your own knight in shining armor. Cut your own hair or ask your sister to do it for you. Of course you know celebrity hairdressers, but only as friends. Always be fuckable: when standing in line at the bakery on a Sunday morning, buying champagne in the middle of the night, or even picking the kids up from school. You never know. Either go all gray or no gray hair. Salt and pepper is for the table.

Lilah did little more than sleep and eat and cry, which to me was the most fascinating thing in the entire universe. Why did she cry? When did she sleep? What made her eat a lot one day and little the next? Was she changing with time? I did what any obsessed person would do in such a case: I recorded data, plotted it, calculated statistical correlations. First I just wrote on scraps of paper and made charts on graph paper, but I very quickly became more sophisticated. I wrote computer software to make a beautifully colored plot showing times when Diane fed Lilah, in black; when I fed her, in blue (expressed mother's milk, if you must know); Lilah's fussy times, in angry red; her happy times, in green. I calculated patterns in sleeping times, eating times, length of sleep, amounts eaten. Then, I did what any obsessed person would do these days; I put it all on the Web.

When an organization confuses diversity or inclusion with reconciliation, it often shows up in an obsession with numbers. How many Black people are in the photo? Has the 20 percent quota been met, so that we can call ourselves multicultural? Does our publication have enough stories written by people of color? Are there enough people of color on the TV show? But without people of color in key positions, influencing topics of conversation, content, direction, and vision, whatever diversity is included is still essentially white—it just adds people of color like sprinkles on top. The cake is still vanilla.

When an organization confuses diversity or inclusion with reconciliation, it often shows up in an obsession with numbers. How many Black people are in the photo? Has the 20 percent quota been met, so that we can call ourselves multicultural? Does our publication have enough stories written by people of color? Are there enough people of color on the TV show? But without people of color in key positions, influencing topics of conversation, content, direction, and vision, whatever diversity is included is still essentially white - it just adds people of color like sprinkles on top. The cake is still vanilla.

The top surface of the computer is smooth except for a fisheye lens, a polished glass dome with a purplish optical coating. Whenever Hiro is using the machine, this lens emerges and clicks into place, its base flush with the surface of the computer. The neighborhood loglo is curved and foreshortened on its surface. Hiro finds it erotic. This is partly because he hasn't been properly laid in several weeks. But there's more to it. Hiro's father, who was stationed in Japan for many years, was obsessed with cameras. He kept bringing them back from his stints in the Far East, encased in many protective layers, so that when he took them out to show Hiro, it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon, zippers and straps. And once the lens was finally exposed, pure geometric equation made real, so powerful and vulnerable at once, Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling through skirts and lingerie and outer labia and inner labia. . . . It made him feel naked and weak and brave. The lens can see half of the universe -- the half that is above the computer, which includes most of Hiro. In this way, it can generally keep track of where Hiro is and what direction he's looking in. Down inside the computer are three lasers -- a red one, a green one, and a blue one. They are powerful enough to make a bright light but not powerful enough to burn through the back of your eyeball and broil your brain, fry your frontals, lase your lobes. As everyone learned in elementary school, these three colors of light can be combined, with different intensities, to produce any color that Hiro's eye is capable of seeing. In this way, a narrow beam of any color can be shot out of the innards of the computer, up through that fisheye lens, in any direction. Through the use of electronic mirrors inside the computer, this beam is made to sweep back and forth across the lenses of Hiro's goggles, in much the same way as the electron beam in a television paints the inner surface of the eponymous Tube. The resulting image hangs in space in front of Hiro's view of Reality. By drawing a slightly different image in front of each eye, the image can be made three-dimensional. By changing the image seventy-two times a second, it can be made to move. By drawing the moving three-dimensional image at a resolution of 2K pixels on a side, it can be as sharp as the eye can perceive, and by pumping stereo digital sound through the little earphones, the moving 3-D pictures can have a perfectly realistic soundtrack. So Hiro's not actually here at all. He's in a computer-generated universe that his computer is drawing onto his goggles and pumping into his earphones. In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It.

After she found out Aurelie was a Negro, Mama became obsessed with the color of my skin, as if Aurelie's hidden blackness had been contagious and I might have caught a touch of it. Whenever she saw me, she stared at me with furrowed brow and complained that I was losing my "bloom." To protect me from the sun, she gave me a parasol to carry when I went out with her, and a straw hat to wear in the convent garden. Still, she worried.

Since Paul wasn’t a big conversationalist—he was the anti-Mac, in other words, and today had been the longest she’d ever heard him speak in consecutive sentences—Jena watched the scenery for a while. Then she decided to study the inside of Paul’s truck to see what she could learn about him. Technically, it was exactly like hers and Gentry’s. It had a black exterior with a blue light bar across the top and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Enforcement Division logo on the doors. It was tech heavy on the front dash, just like theirs, with LDWF, Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office, and Louisiana State Police Troop C radios, a laptop, a GPS unit, and a weather unit. In her truck and in Gentry’s, the cords and wires were a colorful tangle of plastic and metal, usually with extra plugs dangling around like vines. Paul’s cords were all black, and he had them woven in pairs and tucked underneath the dash, where they neatly disappeared. She leaned over to see how he’d achieved such a thing, and noticed identical zip ties holding them in place. “Sinclair, I hate to ask, but what are you doing?” He sounded more bemused than annoyed, so she said, “I’m psychoanalyzing you based on the interior of your truck.” He almost ran off the road. “Why?” “Your scintillating conversation was putting me to sleep.” His dark brows knit together but he seemed to have no answer to that. She turned around in her seat, as much as the seat belt allowed, and continued her study. Paul had a 12-gauge shotgun and a .223 carbine mounted right behind the driver’s seat, same as in her own truck. The mounts had hidden release buttons so the agents could get the guns out one-handed and quickly. But where her truck had a catch-all supply of stuff, from paper towels to zip ties to evidence bags to fast-food wrappers thrown in the back, Paul’s backseat was empty but for a zippered storage container normal people used for shoes. Each space held different things, all neatly arranged. Jena spotted evidence bags in one. Zip ties in another. Notebooks. Citation books. Paperwork. A spare uniform hung over one window, with a dry-cleaner’s tag dangling from the shirt’s top button. Good Lord. She turned back around. “What did you learn?” Paul finally asked. “You’re an obsessive-compulsive neat freak,” she said. “Accent on freak.

PICTURE A CREAM-COLORED couch. Now visualize one brooding dark-haired sex machine (I’m assuming, but I have a strong feeling about this) sitting on one end and one golden being of near perfection on the other. Then there’s me, in the middle, literally squished between two yummy smelling men, and…I just want to escape. The pizzas have been demolished (I ate half of one myself) and now an awkward silence has descended. It doesn't help that I keep thinking of pornos and threesomes. I am honestly waiting for corny seventies music to start. I was here first. I don’t feel like I should have to be the one to move. But I’m awfully uncomfortable. There are other places to sit in the room; a recliner even. Ya know, super comfy, so comfy you can recline. So one of them could move to that. I almost think they’re enjoying this. Like, they’re having fun at my expense because they know I think they’re hot. Why did I blurt that out? “So, what’s with the name Kennedy?” Blake wonders in his deep timbre that doesn’t really sound like Graham’s, but reminds me of him all the same. I turn my head to the right, careful not to move any other body part, and meet his challenging gray eyes. He’s, like, two inches away. So close I can see green flecks in his eyes. I think he’s a little too amused by my predicament, if the upward curve of his mouth is anything to go by. One inky black eyebrow lifts as he waits. “It’s my name.” I raise a single eyebrow back. I can do that too, the look says. His smile deepens. “Yeah, but, what were your parents thinking? Kennedy? For a girl? And technically it’s a last name.” My eyes narrow. Oh, so it’s to be like that, is it? “So is Blake,” I retort and give myself an imaginary pat on the back. “And Graham,” I add triumphantly. “Leave me out of this,” Graham states from my left... “Did your parents have a thing for the Kennedys?” Two eyebrows go up this time. I get my mental pistols ready—it’s obvious there’s going to be a showdown. I straighten my spine. “What do you mean by a thing?” My, totally in this moment one hundred and forty-nine percent resented, roommate groans. He shrugs one broad shoulder. “You know. An infatuation. An unhealthy obsession. Fanaticism. A thing.” “You really shouldn’t have started this,” Graham intercedes, leaning around me to give his brother a look. My face is on fire and my hands are in tight fists in my lap. I stare at the television, which is on and no one’s paying attention to, and say very softly, “I’ll have you know, the Kennedys were, and are, an iconic family. I feel it an honor to be named after them.” Blake grunts. “Do you deny it?” I ask the TV. “Nope. I just wondered about your family.” I jerk my head around and give him a look full of venom. “We will not discuss my family.” He holds his hands up in surrender, but there's a gleam in his eyes. What is wrong with this guy? “Easy there, Ken.” I growl. Graham sighs beside me. “Don’t call me that,” I state through gritted teeth. He looks over the top of my head. “Touchy, isn’t she?” Graham’s head slumps against the back of the couch. “So, Blake,” I begin in a sweet voice, “what’s up with you and red?” I go still, holding my breath. Did I really just say that? That was so not nice. I wait with anticipation and dread. Graham stops moving on the other side of the couch. Blake stares at me, his lips parted. Then he looks at his brother. “What’s she talking about?” My about to be annihilated roomie makes a sound of dismay. I twist around to glare at him. He looks like a young boy who just had his hand caught in the cookie jar; guilty and disappointed that his fun has been halted. “Don’t say the word red, huh?” I jump to my feet and back away until both men are within my line of vision. “You know what?” They both look at me, obviously not knowing what. “This means war!

There’s barely a drop of color in his irises, yet they’re rimmed in black, a unique color that only adds to the obsession people have with him. Little do they know the devil that rests behind them. And that devil has me by the uterus. What option do I really have?

I stand straight again above her sleeping body curled on her side of the bed. I’ve become slightly obsessed with her purity since the weeks I’ve been stalking and studying her. Wanting to coat that clean face with a beautiful mixture of cum and tears is my mission. I want her to get off on her fears until she becomes a dark and twisted creature like me. She’s not like them. She can’t be. She has a real potential for vengeance. I just need to open her mind to the possibility. Her hair is sprawled along the pillowcase above her, black as the color of my soul. Grabbing the knife in my back pocket, I flip it up with my thumb. Taking some of her hair between my fingers, I slide the blade, slicing a good three inches off the end. I bring it to my nose, feeling high off the smell of her. She awakens that primal beast within me with her scent, and immediately I need it covering me.

Why is black so defined? Is it a problem being black? Why are so many people color blind?” -Charlena E. Jackson, Why are You Obsessed with My Race?

What’s your favorite color?” “You’ve got to be kidding me.” “Mine’s gold.” “That’s not a color.” “Technically, it is.” “Fine. Mine’s black like my soul.” “Uh-huh. Totally big and scary and empty.” “What was it you called me? An emotionless trash can?”...“Well, we can’t all have sunshine radiating out of our asses.” “So that’s why you’re obsessed with my ass?

Within positivity culture, immigrants and people of color are expected to be grateful for what they have and to embrace the pursuit of happiness developed by the Founding Fathers. If they aren't satisfied, they can just "go back to where you came from." Conversely, we use positive stereotypes to reinforce the types of people who have "made it" within this system. We say things like "She's a strong Black woman" without questioning why Black women have to be so strong and why we expect this from them. The happy, contributing immigrant is celebrated for achieving the narrow definition of the American dream against all odds. Even though these stereotypes are positive and often given as compliments, they become quite restrictive for anyone within the group who can't live up to them.

The brutality of language conceals the banality of thought and, with certain major exceptions, is indistinguishable from a kind of conformism. Cities, once the initial euphoria of discovery had worn off, were beginning to provoke in her a kind of unease. in New York, there was nothing, deep down, that appealed to her in the mixture of puritanism and megalomania that typified this people without a civilization. What helps you live, in times of helplessness or horror? The necessity of earning or kneading, the bread that you eat, sleeping, loving, putting on clean clothes, rereading an old book, the smell of ripe cranberries and the memory of the Parthenon. All that was good during times of delight is exquisite in times of distress. The atomic bomb does not bring us anything new, for nothing is more ancient than death. It is atrocious that these cosmic forces, barely mastered, should immediately be used for murder, but the first man who took it into his head to roll a boulder for the purpose of crushing his enemy used gravity to kill someone. She was very courteous, but inflexible regarding her decisions. When she had finished with her classes, she wanted above all to devote herself to her personal work and her reading. She did not mix with her colleagues and held herself aloof from university life. No one really got to know her. Yourcenar was a singular an exotic personage. She dressed in an eccentric but very attractive way, always cloaked in capes, in shawls, wrapped up in her dresses. You saw very little of her skin or her body. She made you think of a monk. She liked browns, purple, black, she had a great sense of what colors went well together. There was something mysterious about her that made her exciting. She read very quickly and intensely, as do those who have refused to submit to the passivity and laziness of the image, for whom the only real means of communication is the written word. During the last catastrophe, WWII, the US enjoyed certain immunities: we were neither cold nor hungry; these are great gifts. On the other hand, certain pleasures of Mediterranean life, so familiar we are hardly aware of them - leisure time, strolling about, friendly conversation - do not exist. Hadrian. This Roman emperor of the second century, was a great individualist, who, for that very reason, was a great legist and a great reformer; a great sensualist and also a citizen, a lover obsessed by his memories, variously bound to several beings, but at the same time and up until the end, one of the most controlled minds that have been. Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. We know Yourcenar's strengths: a perfect style that is supple and mobile, in the service of an immense learnedness and a disabused, decorative philosophy. We also know her weakness: the absence of dramatic pitch, of a fictional progression, the absence of effects. Writers of books to which the work ( Memoirs of Hadrian ) or the author can be likened: Walter Pater, Ernest Renan. Composition: harmonious. Style: perfect. Literary value: certain. Degree of interest of the work: moderate. Public: a cultivated elite. Cannot be placed in everyone's hands. Commercial value: weak. People who, like her, have a prodigious capacity for intellectual work are always exasperated by those who can't keep us with them. Despite her acquired nationality, she would never be totally autonomous in the US because she feared being part of a community in which she risked losing her mastery of what was so essential to her work; the French language. Their modus vivendi could only be shaped around travel, accepted by Frick, required by Yourcenar.

whites’ obsessive preoccupation with the happenstance of skin color?

A moment suffices to describe these things, for which I watched so long. The decades of a saros would not be long enough for me to write all they meant to the ragged apprentice boy I was. Two thoughts (that were nearly dreams) obsessed me and made them infinitely precious. The first was that at some not-distant time, time itself would stop … the colored days that had so long been drawn forth like a chain of conjuror’s scarves come to an end, the sullen sun wink out at last. The second was that there existed somewhere a miraculous light—which I sometimes conceived of as a candle, sometimes as a flambeau—that engendered life in whatever objects it fell upon, so that a leaf plucked from a bush grew slender legs and waving feelers, and a rough brown brush opened black eyes and scurried up a tree.

Why does our society teach young people to follow beauty standards? Why do young boys and girls have to look beautiful to be accepted into certain professions such as modeling and acting? Why do companies sell fairness creams? Every skin color is beautiful. Why is the society obsessed with looks?

Why does our society teach young people to follow beauty standards? Why do young boys and girls have to look beautiful to be accepted into certain professions such as modeling and acting? Why do companies sell fairness creams? Every skin color is beautiful. Why is our society obsessed with looks?