Fresh Air – "Love, Race & the ‘Mixed Marriage Project’"

Host: Tanya Mosley (NPR)
Guest: Dorothy Roberts, legal scholar and author
Date: February 10, 2026

Overview:

This episode features a conversation between Tanya Mosley and distinguished legal scholar Dorothy Roberts, focused on Roberts’ new memoir, The Mixed Marriage: A Memoir of Love, Race and Family. The book is both a deeply personal exploration and a historical excavation, sparked by the discovery of 25 boxes of documents compiled by Roberts’ late father, Robert Roberts—a white anthropologist who spent decades interviewing interracial couples in Chicago, including his own marriage to Roberts’ mother, a Black Jamaican immigrant. The conversation traverses Roberts’ family legacy, the fraught history of interracial marriage, the complexities of racial identity, and the limits of love against the structural realities of race in America.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Discovery of the Family Archive

• The narrative begins with Dorothy Roberts unearthing 25 boxes of her father's research, fundamentally challenging what she believed about her parents’ relationship and her father’s work.
  • Quote:
    “I always assumed that my father was writing his book on interracial marriage ... in the 1960s while I was growing up… So now discovering this transcript of an interview from 1937, it just completely upended my understanding of my father's research and its relationship to my family.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (02:16)
• The discovery prompts Dorothy to question whether her father’s academic interest in interracial relationships preceded or even informed his marriage to her mother.

2. Transforming the Book’s Purpose

• Initially, Dorothy considers finishing her father's sociological study, but immersing herself in the material compels her to instead write a memoir that interrogates her own identity.
  • Quote:
    “The more and more I delved into the interviews and thought about the meaning for me and my family and my identity. I was just compelled to write a book about that.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (05:45)

3. Her Father’s Early Engagement & Mission

• Robert Roberts’ interest in racial caste was shaped by early experiences, such as his travels to India, observing caste restricting marriages—mirroring America’s own color line.
  • Quote:
    “He also had the mission of ending racial caste. He thought it could be done through interracial marriage, but that was his ultimate mission.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (07:07)

4. Life Stories of Interracial Couples in Early Chicago

• Dorothy reads from an interview with Mrs. Tyler, a European immigrant whose marriage to a Black man revealed the harshness of America’s racial realities.
  • Quote Reading from Mrs. Tyler:
    “When I came, I thought it was free for everybody…That isn't true … I don't think I ever would have married as I did if I knew all this. I wouldn't have the nerve.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (09:14)
• Discussion of how white immigrant women, believing America was “free,” inadvertently found themselves marginalized when marrying Black men.

5. Colorism, Gender Hierarchies, and Community Exclusion

• Even within circles intended to support interracial couples—such as Chicago’s Manasseh Society—Dorothy’s father records that “black women were almost entirely excluded” (12:27), and the club’s white wives would disparage Black women.
  • Quote:
    “They say horrible things about black women … that black women are so licentious, they don't require marriage. So they blamed black women for the rarity of white men marrying black women…”
    —Dorothy Roberts (13:05)

6. Her Father’s Silence on Complex Contradictions

• Dorothy reflects on her father’s failure to address, in his research notes, the derogatory comments about Black women, despite being himself a white man attracted to Black women.
  • Quote:
    “He never really said anything…The only time I saw ever in the interviews that he really got angry with someone and said, you shouldn't get so upset, you know, when we talk about interracial relationships.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (15:28)

7. Dorothy’s Mother: Forgotten Research Partner

• Discovery that her mother handled key interviews and field notes, shifting Dorothy’s understanding of her mother’s role and the project’s authorship.
  • Quote:
    “Growing up, it was always Daddy's book…But I could see now, after discovering her deep involvement in the research, why she was so frustrated.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (17:15)
• Contrasts in approach: her father’s clinical focus on phenotype, her mother’s attentive, narrative-driven style.
  • Quote:
    “My mother was much more interested in. In the personality traits of the people she interviewed and what their furniture looked like and her own emotions.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (18:40)

8. Personal Reactions, Identity, and Interracial Intimacy

• The research provokes visceral reactions—pain, discomfort, and a reckoning with fetishization and the idea of “whitening” children.
  • Quote:
    “I just have a very visceral revulsion … sort of a fetishization of interracial intimacy and also of biracial children, the idea that whitening children makes them more attractive or makes them more intelligent…sometimes I had to just throw the interview down because I couldn't stand that kind of thinking.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (21:07)
• Explores the complexity of Black men “defying” white supremacy by marrying white women, versus Black women’s history of exploitation by white men.
  • Quote:
    “For many black women, interracial intimacy overall has never really looked like liberation.”
    —Tanya Mosley (14:49)

9. The Shock of Becoming a Research Subject

• Dorothy discovers a folder in her father’s files marked with a number—she was both participant and daughter.
  • Quote Reading:
    “I am research participant number 224. Daddy had created a file on me and placed it among the folders containing notes and transcripts from his interviews with other children of interracial couples… It unsettles me to think that my sisters and I may have been unwitting guinea pigs. In a social experiment designed to prove the viability and perhaps even the superiority of interracial unions.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (25:39)

10. Debates Over the Power of Interracial Marriage

• Robert Roberts believed that interracial unions could dismantle America’s racial caste; Dorothy came to see this hope as naive.
  • Quote:
    “As early as I can remember, my father was trying to persuade me that the answer to America's race problem was interracial marriage…But the idea of the power of interracial love by itself was something I began to question.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (30:05)
• Reading Black Power in seventh grade was a turning point, introducing her to the importance of structural racism (31:15).

11. The Mystery of Attraction and Racial Choice

• Dorothy has only dated Black men and reflects on the complexities in choices of romantic partners and the role of race in attraction.
  • Quote:
    “Isn't it the case that when you marry someone or find someone attractive of your own race, that it depends partly on race?...Is that different from if you find someone attractive from another race?...Somehow I think there's a difference. But it's hard to say.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (33:13)

12. College Years: Hiding Her White Parentage

• In college, Dorothy hid her father’s whiteness to be accepted in Black student circles, something she now regrets.
  • Quote:
    “I now regret that I hid the fact that my father was white, that I denied him that part of my identity…And now that feeling seems so strange to me. But I did have to grapple with it when I came across what I had written in that essay.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (35:28, 36:10)

13. Race as Family Divider: The Limits of Love

• Dorothy’s research forces her to confront how the invention and enforcement of race has severed family bonds, sometimes permanently.

  • Quote:
    “It showed me more powerfully than anything I'd ever read before, how the invention of race, the lie that human beings are naturally divided into races, can erase the very ties of family… The fact that it can take a family that is related … and erase that relationship is an extremely, extremely powerful and insidious way that race can operate.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (39:59)

• Her father believed love across the color line could end racism, but Dorothy concludes the reverse is true—ending racism will finally free us to love each other equally.

  • Quote:
    “We can believe in our common humanity. We can overcome the seemingly unbreakable…shackles of structural racism. But it can't be simply by pretending that the sentiment of love or even loving someone across racial lines will do it. We have to see the work that it's going to take to do that.”
    —Dorothy Roberts (42:13)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “How in the world did my father even get interested in this topic when he was only 21…It really flipped the relationship I thought he had with my mother and his research.”
  (Dorothy Roberts, 02:16)

• “The racial hierarchy that had eluded Mrs. Tyler became painfully clear soon after her wedding…”
  (Dorothy Roberts, 09:14, reading Mrs. Tyler)

• “They say horrible things about black women ... blamed black women for the rarity of white men marrying black women...”
  (Dorothy Roberts, 13:05)

• “I was so delighted to see my mother's voice in the notes ... She writes it almost like a screenplay. It's really, really wonderful to read.”
  (Dorothy Roberts, 18:40)

• “I just have a very visceral revulsion ... sort of a fetishization of interracial intimacy and also of biracial children...”
  (Dorothy Roberts, 21:07)

• “I am research participant number 224 ... discovering that he considered me an actual subject of study. That was a whole new level of entanglement.”
  (Dorothy Roberts, 25:39)

• “My father always respected my opinion. ... He still kept it, and he still loved me, and he still respected my opinion.”
  (Dorothy Roberts, 31:54)

• “We have to see the work that it's going to take to do that. My father thought that interracial intimacy was the instrument to end racism. And I think it's really flipped the other way ... as we end racism, that's when we will see the possibility of truly being able to love each other as equal human beings.”
  (Dorothy Roberts, 42:13)

Suggested Listening Map (Key Segments)

• 00:22 — Introduction of Dorothy Roberts, her father’s archive, the premise of the memoir.
• 02:16 — Dorothy’s discovery of the earliest transcripts and its impact on her family narrative.
• 07:07 — Discussion of Robert Roberts’ early influences, including travels in India.
• 09:14 — The lived experiences of immigrant women in interracial marriages.
• 12:27 — Analysis of exclusivity and hierarchy within interracial clubs like the Manasseh Society.
• 17:15 — Dorothy’s realization of her mother’s uncredited scholarly contributions.
• 21:07 — Reflections on fetishization and the complexities of interracial attraction.
• 25:39 — The startling revelation of being her father’s research subject.
• 30:05 — Father-daughter debates about the efficacy of interracial love as a tool against racism.
• 33:13 — Exploration of dating choices and the mysteries of racial attraction.
• 35:28 — Wrestling with the experience of hiding her white identity at college.
• 39:59 — The lasting, dividing effects of race on families and the limited scope of love to heal it.
• 42:13 — Final reflections: love’s promise and its limitations without structural change.

Conclusion

This thoughtful conversation peels back the complicated legacy of interracial marriage and racial identity, flipping the script on easy narratives about the power of love to conquer all. Through her personal journey and her family’s history, Dorothy Roberts articulates both the transformative potential and the fraught limitations of crossing the color line in America, ultimately arguing that only sustained work to dismantle the structures of racism can free love to unite us fully.