" She’d once asked a black psychologist whose house she’d cleaned on Long Island about black people’s attachment to clothes. She’d told Blanche it probably was partly due to African peoples’ belief in body adornment in a spiritual way, and partly because, consciously or unconsciously, black people in America hoped clothes would make them acceptable to people who hated them no matter what they wore. "

― Barbara Neely , Blanche Among the Talented Tenth (Blanche White, #2)