"When I got to the 1950s interviews, I discovered that my mother was conducting all the interviews of the wives, while my father conducted the interviews for the husbands,"
"Finding out that my mother was involved ... created curiosity I had about my family, about their marriage, and then I began to think about how it related to me and my identity as a Black girl with a white father,"
"My father thought that interracial intimacy was the instrument to end racism, and I think it's really flipped the other way,"
"We end racism when we will see the possibility of truly being able to love each other as equal human beings."
Dorothy Roberts discovered 25 boxes of her father Robert Roberts' research after moving to Philadelphia. Robert Roberts was a white anthropologist who worked at Roosevelt University in Chicago. The boxes contained transcripts of nearly 500 interviews with interracial couples, covering marriages from the late 1800s through the 1960s. The transcripts revealed details about Chicago's racial caste system, including the Color Line and the Black Belt. The records showed that Iris, a Black Jamaican immigrant and Roberts' mother, conducted interviews of the wives while her husband interviewed the husbands. Dorothy Roberts found herself listed as participant number 224 and considered how interracial intimacy relates to ending racism and personal identity.
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