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AMPLIFY: Dorothy Roberts

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“The story of the control of Black reproduction begins with the experiences of slave women like Rose Williams. Black procreation helped to sustain slavery, giving slave masters an economic incentive to govern Black women’s reproductive lives.”- Dorothy Roberts.

 This month’s AMPLIFY features scholar and social justice and reproductive justice advocate/activist Dorothy Roberts. Dorothy Roberts is a Critical Race Sociologist, and the 14th Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor with joint appointments in the Departments of Africana Studies and Sociology and Law School at the University of Pennsylvania. Her studies and work focus on the intersection of race, gender, and socioeconomic status through a policy lens.

 Born on March 8, 1956, in Chicago, Illinois, Rogers is a graduate of both Harvard (BA) and Yale(JD) and has spent her life advocating for a better policy for reproductive health and child welfare, specifically for Black Womxn.  Her book "Killing the Black Body: Race and Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty” documents the history of systematic and institutional oppression of Black women and their bodies through slavery and population control i.e., eugenics, sterilization.  She's written over 100  articles focused on race, women, and law and continues to educate the world and fight for justice.

 Why We Amplify

 Dorothy Roberts has been an activist and leader in the reproductive justice movement. A term coined by Black feminists in the 90s. She has continued to work, speak, and write about the excluding women of color, particularly Black Women, face accessing reproductive health and rights.  

 “We need to reconsider the meaning of reproductive liberty to take into account its relationship to racial oppression.”

 Her research has transformed the dialogue around reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics. Roberts’s continued work emphasizes the lives of women of color, low in income and rural areas, and their lack of access to all reproductive care, i.e., abortion, fertility, abortion, and their right to choose why we honor and continue to amplify her. 

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Facts and Accomplishments

●     Serves as chair of the board of directors of the Black Women's Health Imperative

●     One of the Board of Directors of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform

●     Sits on the advisory boards of the Center for Genetics and Society and Family Defense Center.

●     Received the 2015 Solomon Carter Fuller Award from the American Psychiatric Association

●     Full Professional Title: George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology and the Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights

Check It Out

●     Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty

●     Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century

●     Debating the Cause of Health Disparities -- Implications for Bioethics and Racial Equality

●     Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?

●     TED Talk: The Problem WIth Race-based Medicine

 More on Gender Discrimination, Reproductive Justice, and Race

●     Breathing Race into the Machine: The Surprising Career of the Spirometer from Plantation to Genetics by Lundy Braun

●     Prison, Foster Care, and the Systemic Punishment of Black Mothers by Dorothy Roberts

●     Racism, African American Women, and Their Sexual and Reproductive Health: A Review of Historical and Contemporary Evidence and Implications for Health Equity

Joycelyn lives in Cypress, Texas. She’s the daughter of immigrants and did not go to Law School, but received three degrees (BA, MA, MPH) and is happily freelancing and working in the nonprofit world. She enjoys writing about healthcare recruitment and even worked as a Healthcare Organizer. When she’s not writing, she’s transcribing, developing community toolkits, and researching womxn’s history. Which is why she’s excited about writing for AMPLIFY. On her off days, she spends her time on Twitter reminding everyone to drink water and enabling others to watch more dramas. Follow her on Twitter: @jg_humanitarian