The White Supremacist Within: Dissociated Anti-Blackness and Racial Multiplicity

This paper explores how White supremacist ideology and anti-Blackness are internalized and shape racialized self-object representations, racial identifications, and counter-identifications that form Black subjectivity and development. Using clinical examples of a same-race dyad and a different-race dyad, the author centers “Blackness” in the subjective experience of her patients and herself, whereby a singular core identity, shaped within a Black–White binary, makes for multiple racial self-states with opposing and contradicting beliefs that identify with Whiteness/anti-Blackness and pride in “Blackness.” In examining transference and counter-transference dynamics, the author illustrates how attunement to somatic and affective experiences of anger and the constricting powers of shame can reveal dissociated anti-Blackness that both protect and thwart racial identity development, which includes multiplicity, fluidity, and conflict.