Yes, you can get a color tattoo, but the darker you are, the duller the color will be. It is very unlikely that yellow, white or orange will look good on most African-Americans. Blue and purple are usually dull, and green and red look almost as good as black in some cases. This is why you see a lot of African Americans with traditional style tattoos. The bold stuff always looks great, even with a minimal palette of colors.

   The reason for this is that no matter how bright the colors look going in, you will always have to look through your skin's own pigment to see them. That's why you don't see a lot of bright white tattoos.