Unveiling Hidden Truths: How Dorothy Roberts’ Memoir Challenges Everything We Think About Race and Family
Roberts is skeptical. She notes that her father—who ardently believed our shared humanity could transcend the false stereotypes that divide Black and white Americans — failed to account for how colonialism and White Supremacy erased cultural bonds between black and white people, “obliterating the kinship that might have connected them,” and the systemic bias that persists beyond individual bias. Evidence of the second point can be found in the Supreme Court’s 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision. While the Court ordered an end to anti-miscegenation laws, structural forces continued to discourage and punish interracial relationships. Nor was racial equality instantly achieved with Brown v. Board of Education, or the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of the mid-60s.
