“I like conflicts”
In 1985, Jones told Playboy magazine: “I like conflicts. I love competition. I like discovering things for myself. It’s a childlike characteristic, actually. But that gives you a certain amount of power, and people are intimidated by that.”
This was a confession of awareness and of a desire to be in contention for attention. Jones arguably knew that as a black woman, her fame and fortune at that time was an antithesis to a tradition that insisted on her exclusion.
She was supposed to be afraid and not compete in that space but as she recognized, pushing boundaries has the tendency to invigorate one for further pushing.
