Ambiguously (E)raced: An Intersubjective Exploration of Multiracial Microaggressions and Monoracism Within a Clinical Consultation Relationship

ABSTRACT

Racial microaggressions, or slights and insults against a person’s race, are a common experience for people who identify as multiracial. Mistaken identity, excluding, pathologizing, and exoticizing multiracial existence are examples of multiracial microaggressions. Various multiracial social theories provide a framework for understanding multiracial microaggressions as situated within a society that privileges monoracial people above multiracial people. There has been less attention given to the interpersonal dynamics at play when multiracial microaggressions occur. Drawing from Jessica Benjamin’s concepts of complementarity and surrender in a psychodynamic theory of intersubjectivity, this author seeks to understand possible driving forces behind a multiracial microaggression she experienced during a clinical supervision.

KEYWORDS:

• Multiracial microaggressions
• monoracism
• intersubjectivity
• complementarity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This consultant was not associated with my academic program or with my internship site. These consultations were intended to help me delve deeper into psychodynamic theory and established as secondary to supervision with a primary clinical supervisor.

2 The consultant’s name or identifying information has been disguised for purposes of confidentiality.

3 More specifically, my mother is Han, which is the majority ethnic group within China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore (Song, 2021). When people in the United States refer to ‘Chinese’ they are likely referencing the Han ethnicity. As a result, when it comes to specific questions around my maternal ethnic lineage I may identify as “ethnically Chinese”; however, to accurately capture the complexity of my ethnic, cultural, and national identities I overall identify as “multiracial Taiwanese American” while acknowledging White proximate privilege.

4 I have found the conceptual frame of multiracial microaggressions, and more specifically the themes of “denial of multiracial reality” and “mistaken identity”, useful lenses in which to understand Judy’s behaviors; however, I have also experienced some conflict in labeling her comments as a “micro”aggression seeing how intense and aggressive they were.