In this workshop, we will consider how discussions of race are avoided in interracial couples. The interracial couple’s dissociation from racial stratification leaves the couple
ensconced in the paranoid-schizoid position, where Internal and external pressures contribute to the couble enacting a monoracial identification aligned with white dominant norms. These racialized dynamics have an impact on mixed-race children. An important element of a mixed-race person’s racial self-conceptualization and laentity Is derivea from their Internalization or the Interracial primal scene, whieh can contrioute to a monoracial identification or split object parts in mixed- race individuals when racial stratification is denied or disavowed by their interracial parents. It is necessary when working with interracial couples to not only explicitly discuss their mixed-race status, but to do so in a manner that allows the couple to explore their shared unconscious phantasies, projections, and unconscious assumption of roles in the relationship, with an increased awareness of how those dynamics are hierarchically
racialized to maintain white-dominant cultural ideals.