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Home , Dorothy Roberts, From a Distance, Kerry Washington

DANGEROUS IDEAS

PIK Professor Dorothy Roberts exposes how the myth of biologically distinct races— forged in the era of slavery—continues to poison the present, affecting attitudes and policies on everything from child welfare to medical treatment.

BY MELISSA JACOBS

here’s not much humor to be found For the most part, “black people were female celebrities who become popular around the subjects Dorothy Roberts really proud and happy that Beyoncé was with white people—like Kerry Washington, T deals with, but the Saturday Night as militant as she was,” Roberts added. the star of ABC’s very popular —are Live parody, “The Day Beyoncé Turned “White America, on the other hand, also black. And one man says, ‘How can Black,” was both bitingly funny and prac- reacted—at least much of it reacted— they be black? They’re women.’ And the tically tailor-made for analysis by the quite differently.” other shrieks, ‘I think they might be both!’ lawyer, scholar, and social-justice advo- Which the folks at SNL took and ran with. “That’s what is so terrifying to these cate who serves as the University’s 14th Formatted like a movie trailer, “The Day white men: her performance is extra scary Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor. Beyoncé Turned Black” skewered whites’ because it implicitly combines sexuality Roberts referenced the sketch at the be- assumptions around cultural ownership and politics wrapped in a body that is at ginning of a talk titled “What’s So Dangerous (“Maybe this song isn’t for us.” “But usu- once black and female,” Roberts said. About Black Women’s Sexuality?” that she ally everything is!”), arrogance in assign- “Regulating black women’s bodies has gave on February 17. That was shortly after ing racial categories (a familiar co-work- been absolutely crucial to the relation- Beyoncé’s release of her music video, er isn’t black black; but a youth outfitted ship between and gender and biol- “Formation,” and live performance of the in a gold Africa pendant and camouflage ogy and power, from America’s origins song at the Super Bowl halftime show— jacket obviously is), and fears of racial to the present day,” she added during the “backed up by an entourage of black contamination (in a white mother’s lecture, which was offered as part of the women sporting Black Panther Party mounting horror as she imagines her Penn Humanities Forum’s 2015-16 the- Afros and berets,” Roberts said, and tween daughter has “turned black,” too, matic focus on sex and cosponsored by lyrically “saluting the Black Lives Matter from listening to Beyoncé’s music.) the Alice Paul Center for Research on movement, protesting against police But Roberts homed in on another reveal- Gender, Sexuality and Women. brutality, and celebrating black culture ing exchange: “To me the most telling, “Under the system of chattel slavery, and black beauty, including her ‘Negro truthful moment in this skit is two white black women’s bodies served a critical nose with Jackson Five nostrils’ and her guys cowering under a desk, when they bio-political function. Black women were daughter Blue Ivy’s baby hair and Afro.” realize that not only Beyoncé but other commercially valuable to their masters

34 JULY | AUGUST 2016 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS CRISMAN C’03 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JULY | AUGUST 2016 35 not only for their labor, but also for their to dispel the myth that race is a natural rights in an effort to control, or restrict, ability to produce more enslaved prop- division of human beings.” the number of children they have, accord- erty for them. Whites could maintain In her two PHF lectures—she gave a sec- ing to Roberts. Fighting against that sys- their domination and increase their ond one on February 24—Roberts addressed tem is the goal of the reproductive-justice wealth by devising a legal and political the “interlocking systems of oppression” movement, which she describes as “an apparatus that gave them control over that affect black women, and talked about approach to and free- black women’s sexuality and childbear- black feminists’ efforts to counter them. dom that takes into account the context ing. An oppressive apparatus centered “The sexual violation of enslaved women in which people make reproductive deci- on black women’s bodies. It was—and is and girls set a long-lasting foundation for sions, including the intersecting oppres- still—the linchpin of the system of white contemporary notions about black female sions that women face in controlling their supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.” sexuality,” Roberts said. “This legacy of reproductive lives.” Attitudes rooted in the era of slavery sexual and reproductive violence has been The concept of choice can be a cruel and colonialism—when the concept of a preserved over the centuries by a repertoire fiction for poor women. Many can’t afford racial hierarchy was being constructed of degrading images designed to legitimize abortions, Roberts says, and if they want by white Europeans—continue to reso- white men’s immorality—images that paint to maintain their pregnancies, they don’t nate powerfully in the present, Roberts black women as innately prone to having have access to high-quality prenatal care says. In numerous articles, academic unrestrained sex, procreating recklessly, or public support for their care giving. presentations, and media appearances, and then passing down a degrading life- would remedy the and her books, Killing the Black Body: style to their children.” social inequities that affect poor women’s Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of From the time of slavery—when black childbearing decisions. Liberty, published in 1998, and Shattered women were portrayed as bad, detached But organizations like Planned Parenthood Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare in mothers to justify selling their children— and NARAL have neglected the full range 2001, she has offered a scathing critique such images have morphed into the of reproductive health needs of poor women of how they have shaped popular images “mythical welfare queen” of the 1980s of color, Roberts charges. “Historically, demonizing black women and led to bru- and the uncaring, drug-addicted mothers white women-led organizations have not tally unfair policies on poverty, child of “crack babies” in the 1990s. “Politicians, given an equal voice to women of color and welfare, and reproductive rights. More policymakers, sociologists, demogra- the interests and concerns that sometimes recently, with 2011’s Fatal Invention: How phers, public health experts, epidemiolo- diverge from white women’s interests and Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create gists, the media—all cast black women’s concerns,” she says. “White middle-class Race in the Twenty-first Century, she sexuality as an urgent social problem,” women have been fighting for reproductive extended her analysis to look at their Roberts said. “They routinely circulate rights that affect their own lives, not neces- continuing pernicious effects in our own these icons of black female sexual irre- sarily those that impact black women.” “genomic age,” including on healthcare sponsibility to support , wel- To show how abortion rights is only one policy, scientific research, and decisions fare reform, , and law-enforce- aspect of reproductive justice, Roberts about appropriate medical treatment. ment policies that punish black women’s talks about policies that seek to deter When Roberts joined the University in sexual and child-bearing decisions.” poor women from having children. She 2012 as the first black woman PIK Professor, Taking black children from their black cites child-exclusion policies that deny Penn President Amy Gutmann praised her mothers “is a way of dealing with strug- increased benefits to women who have as “an award-winning teacher and scholar gling families in this country, an alterna- additional children while already receiv- who writes and speaks about some of the tive to generously supporting [them], ing welfare. America’s long—and, says most important and challenging issues especially single mothers,” Roberts said, Roberts, lingering—history of coercive facing our society, including civil rights, and has been a factor in calls for “legis- sterilization (tubal ligation or hysterec- reproductive rights, poverty, child welfare lation that would make it easier to ter- tomies performed without informed con- and family law,” and whose work “blends minate parents’ rights so that these sent) is another example. “This ideology— perspectives from law, sociology, ethics, children can be available for adoption.” which I call a eugenicist ideology—that race and gender studies, and beyond.” While she’s not against transracial sterilizing poor, black women is the Roberts is the George A. Weiss Professor adoption, Roberts does oppose “argu- answer to not only black poverty but pov- of Law and Sociology, the Raymond Pace ments to free black children from their erty in America, that it will save taxpayer & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor supposedly bad mothers so that they can money, is still circulating and is having of Civil Rights, and professor of Africana be adopted by white middle-class families, real social consequences,” she said. Studies. She is also the founding director of made even by white women who claim to “One traditional means of doing that the Program on Race, Science, and Society be feminists. It would be such a stronger was to condition welfare or healthcare (PRSS) in the School of Arts and Sciences, movement if those women joined with benefits on agreeing to sterilization, which, its website notes, is “devoted to black mothers for a stronger system of which is not voluntary consent,” she elab- transformative and interdisciplinary supporting families and reducing or even orates in an interview. “For example, doc- approaches to the role of race in scientific abolishing foster care as we know it.” tors have told women that they will not research and biotechnical innovations, US laws and social policies continue to perform an abortion unless the woman aiming both to promote social justice and infringe on black women’s reproductive signs a consent to sterilization. Thousands

36 JULY | AUGUST 2016 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE of black and Latina women were pressured was never considered immutable, or fun- Darwinism, along with the rise of the to sign a consent for sterilization during damental to the nature of a given group. (quite mainstream) eugenics movement labor or were misdiagnosed with a condi- Early on in Britain’s American colonies, at the turn of the 20th century, all served tion that requires a hysterectomy when blacks were treated similarly to white to further popularize the notion of racial the same symptoms were treated differ- indentured servants, who then com- hierarchies that reinforced the reigning ently in white women. There’s also evidence prised up to two-thirds of immigrants to social order. The horrors of Nazi Germany that white women who seek sterilization the New World. But that changed as threw such notions out of favor—but only are often discouraged from it or even white and black laborers made temporarily. When UNESCO issued a refused the procedure.” cause in revolts like Bacon’s Rebellion statement in 1950 from a panel of inter- Reproductive justice aims at ending in Virginia in 1676, leading to an increase national experts determining that race forced or coerced sterilization and giving in the importation of slaves from Africa “is not so much a biological phenomenon poor women free access to all forms of and actions to “drive an impenetrable as a social myth” and rejecting ideas birth control. With regard to the latter, wedge” between them and their white about racial superiority, Roberts writes, Roberts points to programs that encour- counterparts. By 1700, Roberts writes, criticism from physical anthropologists age at-risk black and Latina teenagers “Africans were treated as a distinctly and geneticists was so fierce that it was to use long-acting implants rather than different kind of slave: they were made withdrawn in favor of a much more qual- the Pill or condoms. into the actual property of their masters, ified statement issued the following year “It’s unethical to identify a group of a lifelong bondage that passed down to that rejected racism but supported the teenagers and encourage them to use a their children … study of racial differences and left open particular form of birth control simply because of their race and class,” Roberts says. Aside from the implicit assumption “Colonial landowners inherited slavery that these teens can’t be trusted to respon- sibly use other methods, “it’s also based as an ancient practice, but they invented on the idea that it’s important for these teenagers in particular not to have chil- race as a modern system of power.” dren in order to increase their opportuni- ties,” Roberts adds. “It’s seen as more of “As officials split white indenture from the possibility of deficiencies in “innate a harm for ‘at-risk’ teenagers to have black enslavement and established capacity” among them. children than for, say, a white middle-class ‘white,’ ‘Negro,’ and ‘Indian’ as distinct If anything could have put such views teenager. Getting at-risk teenagers to use legal categories, race was literally man- to rest, you’d think it would be the Human long-acting birth control is being pro- ufactured by law,” she adds, concluding, Genome Project. After all, when President moted instead of asking why they have “Colonial landowners inherited slavery announced the success of fewer opportunities in the first place. as an ancient practice, but they invented the project in 1999, he plainly said, “I “These policies often divert attention race as a modern system of power.” believe one of the great truths to emerge from the structural forces that put black Roberts describes how this happened from this triumphant expedition inside girls at a disadvantage and instead focus in tandem with a “shift among European the human genome is that in genetic on birth control as the answer. A central intellectuals from theological to biologi- terms, all human beings, regardless of premise of reproductive justice is that cal thinking.” She catalogues some telling race, are more than 99.9 percent the birth control should be a means to give examples from the Enlightenment’s pen- same,” and his comments were echoed people control over their lives. Don’t turn chant for taxonomy—from Linnaeus’s by project leaders Francis Collins and to birth control to solve social problems four-part division of Homo sapiens, with Craig Venter. But in fact, as Roberts caused by structural inequities. When europaeus on top and afer at the bottom; details throughout Fatal Invention, “just government looks to it to solve social to Louis Agassiz’s insistence that “degrad- the opposite” occurred: “scientists are problems, it often is used as a way of ed and degenerate” blacks must have been using genomic theories and technologies manipulating and regulating women.” created as a different species; to Penn’s to create a new racial science that claims own Samuel George Morton M1820 and to divide the human species into natural ace is not a biological category his Crania Americana, which ranked races groups without the taint of racism.” “R that is politically charged,” by skull size. “[N]aturalists made race an “The concept of biological races is Roberts writes in the preface to Fatal object of scientific study and made deeply embedded in every single institu- Invention. “It is a political category that European conquest and enslavement of tion and aspect of culture in our society,” has been disguised as a biological one.” foreign peoples seem in line with nature,” Roberts said at the PHF. Eradicating it The claim that humans can be sepa- Roberts writes. “The insistence on finding “requires simultaneously educating peo- rated into biologically different races differences among people so they can be ple about the true meaning of humanity, was first formulated by white Europeans categorized governs the study of human that we are not naturally divided into as a way to justify owning black people biology to this day.” races, and also concrete social changes as property, Roberts writes. Slavery has Darwin’s theory of natural selection, that promote racial equality, such as end- existed for millennia, but the condition and the twisting of his ideas into Social ing mass incarceration, ending unjust

THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE JULY | AUGUST 2016 37 policies about reproductive health, and Yudell; and Rob DeSalle, a curator of ento- oberts dedicated Fatal Invention ending and policies that mology at the American Museum of Natural to her parents, “Iris and Robert reinforce the view that race is a natural History, the paper stressed that ancestry is R Roberts, who taught me that division and make them seem acceptable.” “a statement about an individual’s relation- there is only one human race.” A major focus of Fatal Invention is how ship to other individuals in their genea- The fact that her parents’ marriage such thinking shapes scientific research logical history; thus, it is a very personal was an interracial one—Iris was black, and medical treatment in multiple ways, understanding of one’s genomic heritage,” Robert white—comes up a few times in with sometimes-disastrous results and while the concept of race “has led scientists the book, as Roberts quizzes various doubtful benefits. Roberts cites a case and laypersons alike to draw conclusions researchers about the (mis)use of racial where a little girl suffered through years about hierarchical organization of humans, categories in their work. of misdiagnoses because her doctors were which connect an individual to a larger pre- Her latest project will focus specifi- apparently convinced that blacks never conceived geographically circumscribed or cally on the topic of interracial marriage, had cystic fibrosis (someone finally looked socially constructed group.” through her parents’ relationship and a at her X-rays without knowing who the Despite the fact that social scientists have trove of interviews that the two of them— patient was), and the equally mistaken been pointing out that the use of racial cat- both anthropologists—conducted with belief that only blacks contract sickle-cell egories is problematic for several decades, other interracial couples over 30 years disease. Another misconception—once the authors noted, even well known experts for a planned book project that never articulated by no less an authority than continue to use inexact terms like black came to fruition. Oprah, and approved by Dr. Oz on her show, and Hispanic. “It is preferable to refer to Roberts inherited 25 boxes of research Roberts reports—is that blacks are prone geographic ancestry, culture, socioeconom- files when her father died in 2001, but to hypertension because Africans who ic status, and language, among other vari- was busy writing two books on more could retain more salt in their bodies were ables, depending on the questions being urgent topics, she says. In the last two most likely to survive the Middle Passage addressed,” Roberts and her colleagues years, she decided to begin exploring the to America in slave ships. wrote, “to untangle the complicated rela- unique archive and write her own book But more than anecdotal tales, Roberts tionship between humans, their evolution- about the black-white couples her par- emphasizes how grouping people by race ary history, and their health.” ents interviewed, her parents’ mission is harmful on two counts (at least). First, In April Roberts and Tishkoff were award- to promote interracial marriage, and the physical appearance or self-identifica- ed a grant from the Fels Research Policy surrounding racial politics in . tion is a very poor indicator for an indi- Initiative at Penn to study the global impact Roberts’ father earned his doctorate vidual’s actual genetic makeup. Second, of race in biomedicine and the social ineq- at the , while work- statistical differences between groups uities that contribute to it. And Roberts has ing as a lecturer at Roosevelt University. are dwarfed by differences across the continued to speak out on the issue, as in a He became a professor at Roosevelt, population. (The greatest genetic diver- recent appearance on the PBS News Hour chairing the anthropology-sociology sity is found on the African continent, responding to a survey of 500 respondents— department, and also held visiting pro- Roberts notes, for the simple reason that including 400 medical students—that fessorships in several foreign locations. people have been living there the lon- showed widespread belief that black people Her mother, originally from , was gest.) For example, referring to a recom- felt less pain and even had thicker skin than a student at the school, and they met mendation that Asians receive a lower whites, leading to under-treatment for pain. when she became his research assistant. initial dose of the statin Crestor because While broad societal myths and assump- They married in 1954. Shortly after research subjects of Asian origin showed tions played a role, Roberts said, such Roberts’ birth in 1956, the family traveled an increased risk of muscle damage, ideas are “deeply rooted and fundamental to Liberia—where her twin sisters were Roberts points out that at least some to the way medical education works in born—returning to Chicago when Roberts whites, Hispanics, and blacks will have the United States: students are taught to was two. It was just one of several trips her a similar genotype to the Asians adverse- notice the race of their patients, to treat parents took for anthropological research ly affected. “Rather than prescribing by their patients differently because of race, and to school their children in multicultur- race, we should ask why Crestor is usu- and they’re taught that that’s because of alism. Foreign exchange students also often ally prescribed at a dose known to have fundamental biological differences lived in the family’s home in the city’s Hyde catastrophic side effects.” between people of different races.” Park neighborhood, and Roberts remembers This past February, Roberts co-authored She called on medical educators to help frequent trips to the Field Museum of a piece in the journal Science that called for students understand that disparate Natural History and the University of ending the use of racial terminology in sci- health outcomes between races are the Chicago’s International House. entific journals and professional societies result of . “This study “My parents had a strong sense that in favor of terms such as “ancestry” or points out how dangerous it is to con- all human beings are equal and can live “population.” Written with fellow PIK tinue to teach medical students that race harmoniously and peacefully together,” Professor Sarah Tishkoff, the David and is a biological category that produces Roberts says. “They were not so much Lyn Silfen Professor in Genetics and these differences in health or experience civil rights advocates as human rights Biology; Drexel University public-health of pain based on biological differences advocates. My very early childhood was professor and PRSS board member Michael between the races,” she said. deliberately focused on human equality.”

38 JULY | AUGUST 2016 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE As a kindergartner, Roberts recalls, she Second-Class Treatment country?” she asked in her lecture. “We embraced her parents’ philosophy. “I don’t have enough child care. Everyone is remember being proud that I had parents he impact of second-class struggling to find adequate child care, of different races and that was an impor- treatment on black people’s even professors here [at Penn].” tant part of my identity. But by the time T bodies is devastating. In 1988, Roberts left the firm to move into I was in seventh grade, I identified as It is manifested not only in academe, “which is what I always wanted black and was much more interested in Excerpt the black-white death gap to do,” she says. “I had become interested liberation for black people than in inter- but also in the drastic in the reproductive rights of black women, racial relationships,” she says. “Until measures required when and I was itching to get into research and extremely recently, I really diminished chronic disease is left unmanaged. teaching.” She taught at Rutgers Law School the fact that my parents were black and Black patients are less likely than from 1988 to 1998, then joined the law white. Most people think of me as black. whites to be referred to kidney and liver school faculty at Northwestern, serving as I don’t identify as biracial or mixed race.” transplant wait lists and are more likely the Kirkland & Ellis Professor from 2002 The limits of interracial harmony were to die while waiting for a transplant. If until 2012, when she came to Penn. evident in Roberts’ extended family. While they are lucky enough to get a donated Her new project represents a departure she and her sisters were very close to their kidney or liver, blacks are sicker than from Roberts’ previous work. She’ll be mother’s family, they were estranged from whites at the time of transplantation putting her parents, their marriage and most of her father’s side. Roberts thinks and less likely to survive afterward. their work on display for the world to that her father may have waited until his “Take a look at all the black ampu- see. She’s now reading through the many parents died to marry her mother. One of tees,” said a caller to a radio show I pages of transcripts from their inter- her father’s brothers disowned him and was speaking on, identifying the views with those interracial couples, the other visited infrequently. “That also remarkable numbers of people with conducted between 1937 and 1967, and increases the mystery for me of how my amputated legs you see in poor black gleaning clues about the origin of her father became so much more open-mind- communities as a sign of health inequi- parents’ professional and romantic rela- ed than his brothers,” she says. ties. According to a 2008 nationwide tionship. “My father began [this project] The racial-political tumult of the 1960s study of Medicare claims, whites in when he was 22, more than a decade probably also played a role in her self- Louisiana and Mississippi have a high- before he met my mother,” she says. “But identification. By age 12, Roberts started er rate of leg amputation than in other during the 1950s, they were interviewing attending political meetings in Chicago, states, but the rate for blacks is five couples together, before they got mar- writing passionate essays about civil times higher than for whites. An earlier ried. Then at some point they became a rights and leafletting for Eugene study of Medicare services found that romantic couple. I’m trying to figure out McCarthy, who was challenging Lyndon physicians were less likely to treat their their motivations and the timeline. How Johnson for the 1968 Democratic presi- black patients with aggressive, curative did my father get interested in interracial dential nomination. therapies such as hospitalization for marriage when he was 22 years old?” Her political consciousness continued heart disease, coronary artery bypass But mostly, she’s coming to terms with to develop during her undergraduate surgery, coronary angioplasty, and hip- the differences between her parents’ years at Yale. It was the height of the fracture repair. But there were two sur- philosophies about race and her own— anti-war and women’s-liberation move- geries that blacks were far more likely and with what they have in common. “My ments, and civil rights were a constant to undergo than whites: amputation of father thought that if we could live inti- backdrop. “Even though I’d always been a lower limb and removal of the tes- mately with each other that we would very interested in social justice issues ticles to treat prostate cancer. Blacks recognize our common humanity,” and participated from a distance in civil are less likely to get desirable medical Roberts says. “But that’s insufficient, rights issues as a child, it was really in interventions and more likely to get because it assumes that people will get college where I began to feel a stronger undesirable interventions that good to know and value one another without sense of the significance of being a black medical care would avoid. the structural changes that are essential. person,” she says. From Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, Black and white people lived in close Roberts followed in her parents’ footsteps and Big Business Re-Create Race in the quarters on plantations during slavery. by majoring in anthropology at Yale, but Twenty-first Century, by Dorothy Roberts, That didn’t create racial equality. What diverged from their path to pursue a law The New Press, 2011. was needed was the abolition of slavery.” degree at Harvard afterward. Graduating While Roberts grapples with her par- in 1980, she practiced law for most of the ents’ legacy, she shares their most basic following decade, joining Paul, Weiss, women with far less support than she had belief and has spent her career further- Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in . to raise children while holding down a job. ing it. “Deep down, fundamentally, what Roberts had three children while working Affordable, high quality child care is I am arguing for and working toward is there as a litigation associate. While the one of the tenets of reproductive justice; a real recognition of everyone’s human- firm had a paid maternity leave policy, it Roberts advocates for that and paid fam- ity,” she says. “I credit my parents for was unheard of for female associates to use ily leave. “Why isn’t there a massive move- giving me that philosophy.”◆ it. Roberts realized how difficult it was for ment by women and all caregivers in this Melissa Jacobs C’92 writes frequently for the Gazette.

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