Conversations in Color: From Research to Real Life

This week, Dr. Shawna Gann—joined by her co-host Kat—welcomes Dr. Geoffrey Greif and Victoria Stubbs, LCSW-C, for a thoughtful and timely conversation about interracial and interethnic relationships, raising mixed-race children, and navigating identity across lines of race, culture, and experience.

The discussion is rooted in research and real-world insight from their forthcoming book When Family Relations Are Race Relations, and it touches on how societal events press into private life, how couples process racial identity differently, and how families work through tension, silence, and love in the face of cultural difference.

The episode was inspired by a moment of curiosity: Special thanks to Neal Augenstein, reporter at WTOP, whose segment sparked this episode.

And while Loving Day itself isn’t the focus of the conversation, the timing of this episode’s release—just ahead of June 12—makes it a powerful moment to reflect. In the intro, Dr. Gann shares a bit of history about the Loving v. Virginia decision, the legacy of Mildred and Richard Loving, and what “Virginia is for Lovers” means to her personally as someone in an interracial family.

🔗 Resources & Mentions

💛 Loving Day & Reflection

• “Remember. Reflect. Celebrate. Loving Day.” – Dr. Gann on LinkedIn
• Virginia is for Lovers – About the slogan

🎥 Pop Culture Mentions

• Cheerios Ad Featuring a Mixed-Race Family (YouTube)
• Today Show Article – Cheerios Ad Backlash
• A Simple Favor – Film Mentioned
• The Wicked Wiz of Oz: The Rusical – RuPaul’s Drag Race (YouTube)

Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Instagram and new for Season 5, check us out on and YouTube and keep up with True Culture on LinkedIn.

If this is your first time with OTC, check out EPISODE 1: START HERE for more background on the show.

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Transcript

Intro  00:06

Welcome to Our True Colors, hosted by Shawna Gann. Join her as she explores the challenges of being a racial riddle, an ethnic enigma and a cultural conundrum. Let's dive in. 

Shawna  00:23

Hey, there, beautiful people. Welcome back to Our True Colors. I'm Dr. Shawna Gann, and I'm so glad you're here. If you've been listening all season or over the past five seasons, you already know that this space is where we dig into the nuances of race, identity, belonging, and what it means to live as our full, complex selves. A few weeks ago, I was getting in my car to go run some errands. So you know, when I started the car, the radio came on and there was a story that was just finishing up on our local news station, WTOP, reporter Neal Augustine was talking about a study on interracial and inter ethnic couples, and it immediately caught my attention for obvious reasons, right? Like, this is our space. This is what I study. This is what we do. 

Shawna  01:09

I needed to know more, so I reached out to Mr. Augustine, and he graciously connected me with Dr. Geoffrey Greif, one of the researchers and one of our guests today. Dr Greif then introduced me to Victoria Stubbs, another researcher, and told me about their third co author, Dr Michael Woolley. The timing of this episode feels especially fitting because I'm dropping it just before Loving Day, which is celebrated each year on June 12. This day commemorates the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving versus Virginia, which struck down laws banning interracial marriage in the US. You might have heard of these laws being referred to as anti miscegenation laws, which basically means anti racial mixing. The plaintiffs, Mildred and Richard loving were a real couple, and yes, that really was their last name, loving. They simply wanted to live and raise their family in Virginia without being criminalized for their love.

Shawna  02:14

I live in Virginia now, and all around the state, you can find these giant love signs, because the state's slogan is Virginia is for lovers, and it's fun. People will take photos with them. I think there might even be scavenger hunts. It's kind of neat, but the slogan carries kind of a dual meaning for me. On the one hand, it's a clever tourism tagline, but on the other it's a reminder that people like me, people in interracial families, weren't always welcome here, that contrast sticks with me, and it's exactly why commemorating Loving Day matters. The legacy of the Lovings lives on in families like mine and in the millions of interracial couples and multiracial individuals, whose numbers are rapidly growing across the country, and that's something that we touch on in today's episode, if you'd like to learn more about loving day and what it means in today's world, I've written an article, which you can find linked in the show notes in today's episode, you'll hear from Geoff and Victoria as we explore identity, parenting partnership, and what it means to live and love across lines of race and culture, especially in a time when Those lines are still deeply policed and politicized. Kat Aragon, one of my two co hosts, joins me for this conversation today as well. Whether you're in an interracial relationship, raising multiracial children or just trying to better understand the people around you, I guarantee you there's something in this episode for you, so let's get into it.

Shawna  03:50

Hey, Kat, how you doing? Hi, how are you I'm really good, actually. You know, sometimes life has me busy enough to be distracted from the stuff that made me not so good, but these days, I'm focusing on all all good. You know, I was thinking about something I wanted to ask you, yeah, just because, you know, I wouldn't go on vacation. I haven't been on vacation in so long. Like, if you could have your ideal sort of retreat, like, for your family, go anywhere, do anything totally disconnect, or whatever you want to do. Like, what

Kat Aragon  04:26

would that be like for you? Okay, so the kids dictate this right now, like, and they're all older, but they're older, and finally, like, able to, you know, drink and go out and all this other stuff. So yes, our next trip is Margaritaville in the Virgin Islands or something like that, you know. So Wow. Because, like, right now it really just because they're older, we get to hang out with them in a different way, instead of, like, them being in the youngins, you know, coming along with us, and we enjoy it, just because if they're gonna have fun, then we can have fun. But like, if it was just me and my husband, definitely a beach somewhere. I know that. Sounds so typical, but like, I just love the water, I love the heat, I love the warmth.

Shawna  05:05

I guess I can't blame you. I'm not. I'm actually not a beach person. I don't know. I just it's not my thing. Listen, so okay, I don't know if you would judge me or not. I'm gonna say, Don't judge me, but actually, I guess you can if you want to. So my husband and I, we just finished, re watching all of the seasons of the White Lotus, okay, yeah. Have you ever gotten into it yet? Listen, it's, it's dramatic. There's a lot that happens. But the point is, I'm like watching. So the White Lotus locations are all these different places, right? And it made me think about, you know, after my, my husband came back from his deployment, and like, 2005 he was deployed to Iraq. Then we were apart for so long that it felt so good to just go somewhere as a family, totally disconnect. I mean, it wasn't that hard to disconnect. In 2005 you had to, like, go to an internet cafe to log in somewhere, pay, like, whatever you had to pay to take it online, right? But it was such a good feeling to just be together as a family. That's 20 years ago. Yeah, 20 years ago. Alfred had been

Kat Aragon  06:09

somewhere since, yeah, actually,

Shawna  06:12

so I was gonna tell you at that time we were, we were stationed in Italy. We were living there, and we went to Central Italy, near like Umbria, is basically the region right next to Tuscany, and we stayed at like a farm community. It's called an Agriturismo. And it was so amazing that we went back every year, even when we moved to Germany, we still we drove like 13 hours in the summer to go because that's how meaningful it was. And just the other day, he was like, I guess because the White Lotus thing. He was like, you know, I think the most connected and the like, he just felt so good when we could come together in that place. And I guess the reason this is on my mind, I'm thinking about our guests today, and they talk about what it is to be part of a marriage when you're an interracial couple, right? The article that I heard about, that they wrote is called views of intermarried couples, implications for social work practice, and it was so intriguing to me, not only because we have these conversations, but I'm thinking about my own marriage, my own family, and the way that we could connect and just be together. Because life is stressful, like there's a lot of stress, and then you add on to it all these other layers of identity and stuff. So I guess that was just something that came to mind, plus, you're right, like, I do wanna go somewhere. I'm ready to go on vacation. But in the end, I just thought about how we were able to connect there as a couple and as a family.

Kat Aragon  07:35

You know what we've been doing? I don't know if you've ever gotten into these YouTube channels that have a scene, and now there's so many, because AI is involved. So it's like a scene of a lake, a scene of a cabin, and just got like, music or just like campfire sounds, or whatever we fall asleep to that. We have that playing on the TV all day long. But it's funny, because my husband wants the cabin and the lake and everything I want, like the beach stop, and then some days we'll switch it up and there's snow outside. So yeah, I could be open to more places than just just opened me up to more options.

Shawna  08:04

Well, there you go. Well, I mean, as long as as you have time with each other and you're connecting right exactly, yeah, well, I would love to introduce our guest to you, because we're kind of on this topic of connecting and being with your spouse, and especially when you do kind of come from different worlds, like finding that space in between where you can come together, to me, is really meaningful. These are some incredible folks. Their work speaks to again, what we explore on this show, but also race, identity, family, what it means to navigate difference with care and connection. I first heard about them when I was like, What in the world? I have got to find the authors of this article, because it just spoke to what we do. So again, the article is called views of intermarried couples, implications for social work practice, and I'll put the link in the show notes for listeners, Dr. Geoffrey Greif, who he said we could call him Geoff in our conversation today. He's a long term professor at the University of Maryland, School of Social Work. He's also a prolific author. He's got more than a dozen books and over 175 articles. Y'all some chapters too, yes. And he's got a book coming up later on this year, which is going to be co written by another one of our guests. And that book is titled, When family relations are race relations, the strengths and challenges of interracial and inter ethnic marriages at a time of great divide. You. We ain't lying. Like, wow, so important. No kidding. So yeah. So also joining us is Victoria Stubbs, who is a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of inner truth psychotherapy and wellness, and she blends her clinical expertise, teaching experience and intuitive gifts to support clients in Maryland, DC and internationally, and she offers therapy, spiritual and life coaching. And is also the author of untangled a black woman's journey to personal, spiritual and sexual freedom. And I just want to. Mention one other person, because, though he's not joining us today, I wanted to acknowledge the third author of the article, Dr Michael wooley, who helped to lead that research alongside Geoff and Victoria. Hello, hello, y'all Kat. We're so happy to have you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thank you for having us. You know, I always like to start by inviting guests to share something about themselves that isn't necessarily in a professional bio, just so they get to know who you are as a person outside of these amazing things that you do in your professional fields.

Victoria S.  10:33

Well, I'll share that I'm a cat mom, and I share that because she may make an appearance off the screen, as she tends to do from time to time. Yes, her name is Eve. She's a black cat, so if you see a tail go by,

Shawna  10:49

that is, they got an eve cameo. 

Geoffrey Greif  10:53

Yes, and I'll, I'll share that I used to be in a rock and roll band that 53 years ago had a song that made it to number 20 in Columbus, Ohio, only because, only because the lead singer taught eighth grade, and all his students called up and requested the song. They had the attention span of an eighth grader. And so the next week, when they stopped calling, it fell off the charts, and that was the end of my career. That's a position.

Shawna  11:21

Firstly, let me just say I love the cameos, because that's so much fun. I've got three dogs, Victoria, and one of them usually is by my side today. She's interested in other things. And Geoff, I love your story because I come from the old school where you actually had to call a radio station make a request. 

Victoria S.  11:40

I was gonna  make the same comment, yeah,

Shawna  11:45

and then sit there, like, if you wanted to record it, like your fingers ready to hit the play and record at the same time, right? That's, I love it. Rock and roll. Okay, well, let's rock Okay, that was cheesy. I'll try to keep my cheese to a minimum. All right, I'll get us back to what we're supposed to be talking about. I'm really curious from from both of you, either of you, what really got you interested in this work talking about intermarried couples and what they go through. And really, I'll just say for the listeners, what I love is it doesn't just talk about the couples get into children and parenting and the family as a whole. So what drew you to this?

Victoria S.  12:25

Geoff, you wanna start? 

Geoffrey Greif  12:27

Happy to start. I had done some books with Michael wooley again, our co author on this. We had a book that came out in 2016 on adult sibling relationships, and then a book in 2021 on in law relationships. And we were wondering, well, what are other relationships that are important? We had known Victoria from her work at the University of Maryland. She was there for a number of years, and outstanding in the classroom and outstanding with helping the faculty and students talk about and navigate issues around difference, issues around race. So she seemed to be the exact right person for us to go to. And I had admired her as a person for a while, and also as a as a therapist, as a clinician, able to sort of get in. And she and she and I had had a number of good, I think, one on one talks, and so I felt very comfortable that she would have an important voice in how we shape the research and also how we interpreted the findings. The book is based on surveys with over 400 people in interracial or interacting marriages, and also based on more than 140 in depth interviews with people. So that's sort of how the train came down the road, and I'm glad that she joined us as a conductor. Am I mixing too many metaphors?

Shawna  13:56

I'm here for it.

Victoria S.  13:59

Yeah. And just to piggyback on that. Yeah, so Geoff has actually been a teaching mentor and a writing mentor for me while I was at the University and then so when he presented me with the opportunity to write with him, I was already doing couples therapy, and I hadn't actually paused to think about how many interracial couples I worked with until he brought up the topic. And then when I sat back and really thought about, like, most of my clients are interracial couples, or inter ethnic couples in some way. So then I was like, oh yeah. Well, this will be really interesting, because I'm already, I'm already working with this population, and so it just sort of allowed me to really dig into how I work with those couples, and then to think about and to put them in context with the folks that we interviewed. So it was a combination of wanting the opportunity to be mentored and write alongside my mentor and also reflect on. And what am I actually doing in the in the therapy room? 

Shawna  15:05

And put it on paper, all of that sounds very relevant. And Geoff, you said something that piqued my interest too, is that working with Victoria helped when you were doing your analysis as you were thinking about how you saw the data. Your team itself is pretty diverse, and I'm saying this because my work intersects with diversity, equity, inclusion, but also I'm a Business psychologist, and then I bring in my research, and one of the things that I speak about is that for so very long, a lot of research in all fields, I'm just gonna be, I should say most fields really has been through a singular lens, either study participants aren't very diverse, or the people who are conducting the studies, doing the analysis and reporting findings, don't offer a lot of diversity. So it seemed to be for so long, what we get is filtered through a singular cultural lens. And I, you know, took note that you are a diverse team. I'm curious what kind of conversations you had as you thought about this. How did you work together as a team, bringing together all of your different lenses with this research,

Speaker 1  16:11

I think probably with the help of Michael Woolley, who's a white male and close to me in age. But it's just interesting because Mike and I have written other books together, and one of our research assistants, not co authors, once said to us that we have very different views of the world. That I came from a two parent family. My parents were always married. Michael grew up in a family where I think there were a number of stepchildren, a number of divorces. I think, I think I have a rosier view, or I had a rosier view, and we were writing our stuff. So even between Michael and me there, there was certainly very different worldviews. And to answer your question, Michael and Victoria and I met over the course of years, and I sometimes felt that Michael and Victoria were maybe more on the same page than I was with Michael I was with Victoria. Now, obviously I'm bringing an older, white male view, and I have position of privilege and that that causes me to shape what I'm seeing. And I may be downplaying pain in people, or I may be trying to find it more than somebody else would. So it's interesting to think about, how do we all connect with other people's struggles? How much do we place that as part of the human struggle, the ambivalence, the ambiguity in life, how much of that is shaped by race and by gender and age, and the privilege that I, that I have, that I realize a lot of the world does not have. I think all those things. When you're reading a quotation from a white woman or a white man, or a black woman or a black man, or an Asian woman, or an Asian man or a Latina, we have American Indian, we have a lot of diversity in our sample. We're all going to project things onto it. And so we often would say, Well, I see it like this. Well, I see it like that. And then we have to think, well, how will the audience read this too? It's important to also be where the people we interviewed are, but then also think about who's the audience and what are we trying to say up here. 

Victoria  18:29

Speaking of the lens, I also bring the queer lens into it, and so it was important to me from the door to also make sure that we had representation in our sample of LGBTQ couples as much as we could, even though sometimes the dynamics might be different, we had to talk about, you know, there are some queer couples who aren't married legally, but they've just been together before they were able to be legally married. And so how do we even factor that in? Do we factor that in? How are we reaching out, making sure that we're getting in that lens, so that it's not just straight couples being represented, but there's also queer couples being represented. So I often would bring that to the table in a lot of our conversations, of like, again, who's our audience, but then also, like, I'm working with a variety of couples, so I want to make sure that that is represented in our work as well. 

Shawna  19:29

I really love that, and I actually am so glad that we're having this conversation. Because, you know how often you hear like a news bite or something you know, on the radio, and they're like, new study shows blah blah, blah, blah, blah, but the people listening like they don't know necessarily, how that study came to be, who people talked to, unless, you know, they are so inclined to go find it and actually read that academic study. And if you're not trained or practiced in that, it's like, you know, it's English that you're reading. But those were like, what is it? I'm actually looking. At so I think it's great to have some background on the lenses people are looking through. What are the what are the different perspectives, not only of the folks who participated in the study, but the people who are doing the analysis. So thank you for that.

Victoria  20:13

Yeah, thank you for that question. Because I love how you framed the question around it, not just being a single lens, but that it's, you know, multiple and then how do we bring that together? 

Shawna  20:25

Kat, what you thinking about? 

Kat Aragon  20:26

I mean, exactly what you just said. Like, when I see a survey, you just or a study, I literally just look at it as, like, the percentages, or, you know, the information that's put out there. And this is just opening up my eyes to be like, wow, like all the different people and all their different backgrounds and how they're answering and where they're coming from, and I don't think I've ever put those layers on it. So this is just very eye opening. And I always wonder who that I was like. I didn't get asked. Where's my opinion, who's speaking for me over here? So it's nice to know that it's a diverse audience, hopefully, anyway, for all the different surveys,

Shawna  21:00

yeah, yeah. And just Victoria even mentioned that it was intentional to bring in the diversity, which, again, I think is very meaningful. As a researcher myself, it was one of the things that I pointed out. Like for years and years, there are people who were excluded from surveys for a variety of reasons, and so it's tough because there'll be like, a statement made that's a generalization. You're like, this is what we're saying about the general population, but the whole population isn't represented. And so it's important to me, and when I see a team like this that can bring that lens, like, I'm like, Yes, that's what we're looking for. Yeah. And the participants, your study sample that you're getting that lens too you

Shawna  22:05

I would love to get into the nitty gritty, a little bit of what you've been learning about your participants. One of the things that I saw was that communication, specifically, open communication, was really the strongest predictor of positive experiences in our married couples. What does that look like in everyday life? I mentioned at the start 20 years ago, when my husband and I, because he was deployed, we were apart, and my kids were really little. Then they're 23 and 26 now, but then they were little, right? So we sort of had whatever we had going on at home while dad was deployed, and then we had to sort of relearn how to communicate and integrate, and again, that's just as a couple or as a family that doesn't even add on the extra layers of identity. So you know, as you talk to folks, I'm just curious, it seems almost obvious that open communication would be a strong predictor of a positive experience. But can you share how that is so important, especially for couples who come from different racial cultural backgrounds.

Victoria S.  23:08

Yeah, I'll start because I think the layering on is the key that like when we're talking about open communication, it's recognizing that culturally, there may be a reason why we're not talking about certain things, because that's how we were socialized, right in our family of origin, we might have been socialized a certain way as it relates to communication, and then when we join with somebody from a different cultural background, we're just assuming that we can just continue To communicate in the way that we were communicating over there. And so what I usually see is that that's the struggle, is that it's recognizing that, yes, we have open communication in the sense that we enjoy talking to each other, and we're talking about the things, but a lot of times the way that we're talking about it, what's omitted, all those things, that's where the identity stuff comes in, because that's the cultural stuff that oftentimes folks like they know it's there, but they're not consciously aware that that's what's impacting their struggles around communication. So when they come into therapy, and communication is usually the leading thing that they say, what I end up helping them to see is how their cultures and their family of origin and their different identities, their stories from those identities, that's actually what's infused in their communication style, and that's the piece that we have to explore with The couple to help them understand that about each other, so that then we can work on Okay, I see you now, why you're communicating that way, and how do we now bridge that?

Geoff  24:52

Just to kind of look a little bit at it from the research point of view now, because Victoria has her ear too in the eye on what's. Happening in the room. We found, interestingly enough, that there may be a sweet spot as to how much to communicate. Oh, and that, of course, varies in every marriage, and it certainly varies in these marriages, because these marriages are buffeted by what's happening in society and what might happen if two people from different races are married and an event happens that affects one member of that race, something happens where, where people go, and a person shoots up a church or shoots up a mosque or shoots up a synagogue, if it's an interracial marriage, it's going to affect that person who identifies with those victims more, and then that forces the outside world onto the couple, and it presses down on them. We sort of call it a societal press, almost. And then under pressure, they then have to figure out how to talk about that. So that's always going along. You wake up in the morning, all of a sudden, you get slammed by something in the news. We all get slammed by stuff, but this is we're talking specifically about what happens when people are coming at it from different races, different ethnicities, different perspectives, and that forces them to even have to work on it more. And then there's another layer, of course, if they have children, how do they process it with their children? But we found there's kind of a sweet spot about how much to talk about it, but if you talk about it too much, it starts to sink the marriage. And that's that's true of a lot of of folks in some of the struggles they have. How much do we need to put this out? Is it every day? Is it every minute? Is it once a week? And sometimes they have no control over that because there's a horrific shooting someplace that is targeting somebody from that identified group?

Shawna  26:58

So I should tell the two of you, the listeners who've been around for a while know this, and of course, Kat and you and I have talked to this. My husband's white, and though my appearance is very racially ambiguous, I'm not biracial. I identify as a black woman, but I have multi generational mixedness, so to speak. So part of my family is black, part of my family is Creole, which is a whole mixture of things. We would say high in 57 there are times when things happen in society, like just stuff has been happening, right? Let's be real. There are times that things happen and I'm just going off. So besides my identity, there's also what I do for a living, right? I'm in this diversity, equity, inclusion space. So that's even another layer of it. And I remember, just recently, I was just fussing out my husband. We've been married 27 years, so he's kind of used to me by now. But at some point, I just looked at him and I was like, God, I just wish he weren't white today, because I wanted him to identify. He's very sympathetic, empathetic, and he gets it. But there is a limit to getting it if you don't hold the identity right. I wanted him to get it at the same level, like I got it. And I can also see, like, if we didn't have the relationship that we have, like he could be over it, if all I'm doing is talking about the stuff that I talk about, so I kind of get what you're saying there, Geoff about there's got to be a sweet spot. And I try to, you know, read the room too, like, Okay, that's enough. That's enough. And then I got to go call a friend or something if I if I feel like I still need to talk about it. Yeah.

Victoria S.  28:34

And then, on the flip side, we also saw in the research that, particularly, I'm thinking of one of the cases where the opposite sort of was true, in that it was the white person in the marriage who, as things were happening, particularly in 2020 21 that want to talk about it all the time, and then the kids who were identified as biracial were just like, we've been dealing with this for a long time, like you're just now catching up. And so to that point of the sweet spot, it's sometimes the reverse that, like the person of color, to your point, is like, we actually sometimes don't want to talk about it because we've been living it, or we work in it, or like we're constantly bombarded and thinking about it, so we may not, and they may not want to talk about it. And so in that particular case, it was interesting because the participant had to check herself and be like, oh, right, let me moderate myself, because I'm putting this on my family, because it's newer to me, and so I have to find again, that sweet spot. I have to back up some because they may not want to talk about it all the time. And that wasn't that was a realization for her.

Geoff  29:51

Right. Some of the other women married to black men, especially the white women in 2020 began to realize, oh, maybe. My husband is not safe out there. If it could happen to George Floyd, just realizing with cameras there, gee, maybe can happen to my son or my daughter as well as my husband. And then she'd want to process it, and her husband would say, what, you know, I've been dealing with this all my life, and you're just getting there. But there's also that and not but there's and also an educational process that the minoritized person gets tired of having to continually educate a non minoritized spouse too. You

Shawna  30:54

I think that race aside, geographically, there's a difference. My husband's from the Midwest, and in general, that way of being is completely different than how I grew up. So there are times we have conversations where I'm like, okay, if I'm getting frustrated, or if he's getting frustrated, in communication, it's not only sort of how we were raised culturally, but also what the bigger I don't know what you would call that, like the society at large, but within that geographic region, how that would be handled Absolutely, like, they're just things that you don't really talk about, you know? And I came from a family where we talk about everything, I think learning not here's where I came from and here's where you came from, but like, how do we as a unit now need to come together and be and communicate

Victoria S.  31:43

Correct, correct. And that's, that's the part where, again, sort of going back to the analysis when we talked about the implications for practice, that's the part that we want clinicians to understand, that when you're working with couples, right, that these are some of the things to think about, because as therapists, you know communication okay, we can have all sorts of models for how we teach people communication skills, but they usually don't talk about that part that you just said that like, but we have to figure out as a couple how do we bring our cultural backgrounds, Our identity and geographically, where we came from, our styles, how do we bring that together? And that's not just based on a skill that is based upon a deeper level of understanding and practice

Kat Aragon  32:32

and then practice. Yeah, my parents have been married for, gosh, I don't know, 4040, something years now. And my mom is Filipino. My dad is white, and they have such a, I mean, not even just a just communication clash in general, and they've still had it all this time. And it wasn't until I started dating my husband, and almost even 10 years into our relationship, we've been married this year for 23 years now, and like, 10 years into our relationship, I finally broke the communication style that my parents had, and what that communication style was was, if you're mad, you walk away, you get in the car, you drive whatever it is, you don't talk to each other for four days, and then somebody needs to find the keys or something, and they're like, oh, it's there. Oh, somebody broke the first word. Now we're getting along. Like, this is how they communicated me and my sister for the longest time. Like, had to, like, learn how to get out of that. And a lot of it was because, I mean, they have their both, both of their reasons why they felt that way. My dad would get frustrated with my mom not understanding things. I guess the frustration was, you know, building on her during the communication and so they just would rather not talk. And so we learned just to not talk to each other. And thank goodness for my husband being so patient, because now he was the guy who had to talk like, I wish I had that when I was younger, but I didn't. But now it's like my husband needs to communicate. And finally I started to realize, like, things get better faster. If we just take that moment to even five minutes instead of four days of not talking to each other, five minutes of a conversation can get us back to a good place. Yeah? Now our kids and us like open talking about everything all the time. It's almost like the next generation. Now they're just in constant communication with us about how they feel and

Victoria S.  34:10

stuff. Yeah, there were norms that were established in your family that you just adopted, not thinking so much about whether it was good, bad or whatever. That was just what you were exposed to. And so that's what you brought into your relationship, right? And so that's, that's the part, sort of going back to the umbrella that I was talking about, as it relates to what we bring in, right? It's those types of things, because that was just there, and we just learn it, and then we do it, and then we got to unpack, because we're like, why is it not working? We got to figure out why it's not working.

Kat Aragon  34:43

And you know, it took us into our 40 like my, maybe my late 30s, 40s, to get into understanding this. I'm just so grateful my kids at 20 something are like, that much quicker in understanding it. I'm like, Oh, good. Like, it doesn't have to be this repeating learning process for all the different gender. Operations, hopefully it'll just be even faster for their kids, you know, yeah,

Shawna  35:17

speaking of kids, I know that you also in your in your work addressed parenting, I just wondered if you could talk about that a little bit. I would just love to know what you found out, what was interesting to you, and what you could share with parents listening. 

Geoff  35:34

I think one of the challenges for any parent is when to talk about race, and so that's one of the things that comes up is it raised by a two or three year old child who says, mommy and daddy, your skin colors aren't the same, and we have reports of that. And then when does a parent talk about that? How does a parent talk about that? It goes back to how often does a parent talk about that when a child may not look like either of the parents? Which is that the case in obviously, in some interracial marriages, there's a child whose skin color does not appear to be the same as the mother or the father. As the kids get older, of course, parents then talk to their children, and then as the kids reach their teens, we have instances of children pushing the parents. So whereas the parents are sort of in charge of the dialog when children are younger, as children age, of course, and two children the same family may not identify the same either. Yeah, I've seen that they may start to press the parents to get more engaged. There were teens that would be on their phones over dinner during the 2020 riots, and pushing their parents to talk about it and get more engaged. So it becomes an issue where parents need to be aware of how they're feeling about it, how comfortable they're feeling in talking about it and realizing that their children may identify as a different race from either of them or the same race as one of them. 

Victoria S.  37:09

Yeah, because that was one of the things that I thought was interesting, and I saw it a lot throughout the research, is that the parents who had really young children spoke about wanting to let the child decide how they wanted to identify. I was thinking about this when you were talking about the openness part too, is that, like a lot of the parents, felt very comfortable like letting their child decide and not feeling like they needed to put pressure on them to choose something, but just to help them figure out what made sense for them. And I thought that was an interesting finding that

Shawna  37:44

is very interesting. I feel like my own children grew up caring about blackness, black culture, black everything growing up, because we just always talk about it like always. I like to use this example, the Wizard of Oz. We are a big like Ru Paul's drag race family. Okay, that's like Friday nights in our house. That is what is happening. Is Ru Paul's drag race. There was an episode in Season 17 of RuPaul where they do a musical, and I forget the actual name, I'll put it in the show notes, though it's like Wicked The Wizard of Oz and The Wiz all put together in the title. And they do like aspects of all three versions of The Wizard of Oz in the rusical and my son, Christian, he was talking to his friends because he hosts watch parties for the drag race. And he was talking about how he didn't grow up with the Wizard of Oz, which I did not grow up with the Wizard of Oz. I don't think I've ever seen the actual Wizard of Oz movie from beginning to end, with one exception, and it doesn't count, and it was because we were, like, 20 something, 20 something, and someone told us we had to play Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon to it, because it would be, like, really cool, I don't know. So we tried it. I grew up with the Wiz, you know, we didn't follow the yellow brick road. We eased on down. Like, that's just how it was. My kids also grew up with the Wiz, and so people are looking at him like, you know, The Wiz, like he can sing the songs he can because he doesn't look like it's not how they expect. Again, my kids present white. I think I always talked about my culture, whether it was The Wiz versus the Wizard of Oz, whatever. I don't think my husband ever really did talk about white. He would talk about what it was like growing up on a farm, but that's not specific to race, right? So I don't know. I just find it interesting. Like it we never had a conversation, like, should we talk to the kids about being mixed? Like, it just always was the

Kat Aragon  39:36

experience that I go back to every time of me really starting to identify, like, my mixed race Ness, and trying to figure out where I fall, and all that was all these multicultural nights at school. Like, I remember being so, like, proud to bring, like, the food from my family and all this other stuff. And I was like, Oh my gosh. I you know, like, that was probably the first time where I was like, Well, wait, my mom makes Filipino food. What can we make? Or, if I was in Spanish class, I was like, What can we do? You know. So I think that's what got me really interested. It never was a conversation with my parents, honestly, that there's school to Yeah, it was school that's so

Victoria S.  40:09

interesting. Yeah, and what you're sharing about, like, intentionally talking about blackness versus whiteness, because I think one of the things that we talk about in our research is proximity, and how that influences how people understand but really what you were talking about, and how when couples come together, oftentimes that's the first time that one of their families, or both of their families, has been in close proximity to the other ethnic group, right? And so that then sort of forces more conversation and more awareness to your point of the Whiz or, you know, whatever. And so when you're in close proximity, and it's people that you're interested in wanting to be around, right, like it does, open the door to a different level of thinking and understanding about, quote, unquote, the other Do you know what I mean? And I think even when we were talking about whiteness, those were some of the discussions that we would have, you know, along the journey with the book, when we were just sort of thinking about things and sort of analyzing the data and whatnot, it really was around, how are folks defining black? How are folks defining white? I mean, I'm just using white and black as an example, but it could be Asian and, you know, something else, but, like, What do those words mean? Like, when you said, like, farming doesn't necessarily represent whiteness, but to someone in the privileged group, that may be part of their definition. If you're in the majority group in the Midwest, where that's what you're surrounded by, that may be how you define whiteness.

Shawna  41:53

When you think about a farmer, that's the image you get, right? Yeah.

Victoria S.  41:57

Meanwhile, I a black woman grew up with a father who was a farmer, like we did farming. And so for me, blackness is farming because it's working with the land, because that's how I grew up. You know what I mean, but that's the kind of stuff that you can start to unpack when you're in closer proximity to folks who are willing to talk about and understand sort of why your connection is with the Wiz and not the Wizard of Oz.

Geoff  42:25

By the way, I may be the only one that saw the Wizard of Oz, but I won't tell you. I won't tell you what happens in the end. Yeah, I'll spare you from that. 

Geoff  42:52

You also talked about growing up in the Midwest, a lot of what we found were that couples were unwilling to go to certain parts of the country because they did not feel safe there interesting. It doesn't have to be the Midwest. It could be Southern Maryland, even, you know, some people said I'm okay in Baltimore, but I don't feel comfortable going down with my spouse to the eastern shore or to that little store there, or more in general, to the south the United States became an issue too, and that's just sort of confirming a lot of other research that's been done. There obviously are regions of the country that feel safer to interracial, inter ethnic couples than other places, not because they don't like a certain group. It's they feel uncomfortable when they see different groups, a white person, a black person together. That's different than seeing two black people together or two white people. It's the combination that can set off people. There's obviously an incredibly dark history to that that people still have somewhere in their DNA, or the fear of that.

Shawna  44:05

I love, that you bring that up, Geoff, because when my husband retired from military, we had to decide where to live. And you know, we weren't going back to Alaska. That's where we met. I was living there, and he was stationed there. Our parents have moved to different parts of the country since we got married, so there was no going back, because our parents weren't there anymore. So home kind of looks different, and we didn't want to go to those places, so we had to pick a place like, what would be our new home. And we had so many conversations, because he wanted all this land, and I'm like, well, one, I'm city girl, not country girl, but two, sometimes where all that land is is not in places where I would feel comfortable walking around as a couple. And honestly, we chose the DC area because it is such a diverse area, and because the work that he and I had both done, it brought us into contact with not. Military families, Foreign Service Workers, State Department people who have lived in so many different places that they got that exposure that you talked about Victoria Right, not because of their families necessarily, but because they were working and living either in different countries where they did not look like the people that were the majority in those countries and so on. So we found that this area, because of its racial, ethnic, cultural diversity, we could fit right on in. But there was some serious, intentional thought that went behind, where will we as a couple, how we are feel the most comfortable and at home?

Geoff  45:39

We also interviewed people who said, you know, we're living in Baltimore, but we're not living in that neighborhood in Baltimore. So it can be as specific as that. That

Kat Aragon  45:49

conversation we started with, you know, the beach and everything, of like, wanting to go the beach and stuff. I know that we were considering, you know, like one day retiring at the beach, or, you know, having a vacation home and stuff. And that was always the next sentence, like, would that be a safe space, or would that be a place where we would be comfortable to be, you know, because we look at these bougie beach areas that we like, love to go for a few days or for a week and everything, but it's like to settle down, like, what is the demographic? What would you be accepted there, you know, with our family and stuff? And those are the separate questions you have to ask yourself, which I just now realized in this conversation, so many people don't ever have to even think about that.

Shawna  46:24

I would even expand that a little bit outside of just my husband and me to my children and our parents. When we were thinking about where to live, I was thinking about where can my parents come visit comfortably, right? Like I want them to feel comfortable visiting me, and then our children, you know, my son and his husband, I want them to feel comfortable coming home. And so I think that intentionality is so key. You know, this is really a very interesting topic about who thinks about that at such an intentional level, who doesn't have to, and why it's so important. That's right.

Shawna  47:18

I wanted to open it up and ask you all if there was anything that surprised you in your study, something that you just did not expect. 

Geoff  47:27

We've talked about the challenges, but I think I want to spend a minute or two talking about some of the strengths, some of the ways that people have persevered, have been successful in what they're doing. Most of our couples, from our research are happy in their marriage. It's important to say that one out of six marriages today are interracial or inter ethnic. One out of three are interfaith, by the way, so there's been a huge change in the number of people, and we think these families are, for the most part, feeling very accepted by their in laws. They're accepted by their own families. Yes, there are people out there who may be giving them problems, but most of the people that we interviewed said they were very happy in their marriage and that they felt accepted by their in laws. The vast majority of these couples are doing well, and their children are doing well. 

Victoria S.  48:22

One of the things that I was thinking about was how, and I guess because I was a bit more cynical, but I was surprised at how hopeful folks were about the future, as it relates to being an interracial couple in this country. One of the things that I was interested in why I was interested in doing this research was because I was intrigued by the amount of commercials that we see with interracial couples. And that was one of the things I said from the beginning. Was like, Oh my goodness. I was like, it has ramped up from however many years ago when we had the whole Cheerios debacle, and now 

Shawna  48:58

People were losing their minds over Cheerios Kat, right, because of the commercial, lines over

Victoria S.  49:03

that commercial, and now it's like there's, like, a plethora of interracial folks. So that intrigued me. Got here, and so I was just sort of a bit cynical. So to hear from the couples, you know, when we asked about how hopeful they were about sort of the state of things for interracial couples and folks felt hopeful, in part because of the visibility, because it's so much more commonplace, and so that surprised me. But I think the other part, as far as the positive was that that I really wanted to highlight in our book too, was that how couples are navigating these topics is in some ways, like a blueprint, because when we're talking about dei and these conversations, and you know, like Geoff mentioned at the beginning, one of the things that I did the university was really tried to help faculty and students have difficult conversations around race, power and privilege and oppression. And what we found. Filmed in this research was that the couples and the families, they're learning how to do it in real time, like they're forced to do it because my husband's coming, my girlfriend's coming, my grandma's coming, like they're forced to have to figure these things out, whereas folks who aren't in interracial relationships or even with any other kind of intersectionality, you could easily just sort of go over there. You can go over there. You don't necessarily have to be in proximity, like we were saying. But if it's in your family, some way, whether you wait until the grandchild appears and then all of a sudden, now it's great or not, you're sort of forced to have to figure something out about yourself, about your, you know, ideas of other people. And so what we saw was how they grapple with it. I really think can be a blueprint for how we all need to grapple with it, and can move through it when you lead with love. Because that's ultimately, what we saw happening was that folks were leading with love, and it forced them to go, Wait a minute. I love these people. Why am I showing up this way? Or, Hey, I don't want to not have my grandkids in my life, so let me check myself right, or let me go talk to my parents, and we got to figure this out, because I don't want to miss out on people that I love. And so if we can lead with love in that way, then they offer us some lessons on how we all can sort of do this differently.

Shawna  51:30

There is something about now, don't y'all make fun of me, but it's just the thing for me, there is something about seeing a black woman and a white man together on TV, because when I was growing up, any friends that I had that were mixed black white mixed their parents were a white mom and a black dad. For some reason nowadays, to see sort of the opposite, where there's so many black women partnered with white men, and I don't know what it's like in the queer community when you start to look at these dynamics, to be honest, but from my perspective, as I started to see commercials, then I'd be like, what's going on here? What Chad? My husband's Chad, they looking like us like That's amazing. So I think representation means so much more to people than folks realize. To see not only yourself, but to see partners, to see families, to see all of these different combinations of the way people can just love and live together. Like, I don't know, I think it's amazing. That's why I did my little excited clap, because when I started to see it portrayed in commercials, that's when I felt like, oh, it's becoming normalized. Oh, my God, it's becoming normalized. 

Kat Aragon  52:43

I still don't think I see enough people, Asian men, with white women. I always, I have my my mom, you know, with my white father. And I'm like, That's the combination I always see and and all my friends growing up, they were half Filipino, half white, and, you know, military families and things like that. And I've never seen it the other way. And then that movie, a simple favorite came out years ago where I don't know if his name was Harry or Henry, or something like that. The Act, the main actor was Asian. I was like, Oh my goodness. Like, this is like, this is like, crazy. I've never seen this representation and everything, but I do find that that's such an interesting outlook, because I feel the same way about, um, yeah, my experience,

Victoria S.  53:19

yeah, because I felt the same way when I saw a lesbian couple in a commercial, or just a gay couple in the commercial, I'm like, Oh, just doing regular stuff, right? Looks like, Oh, they're going to the bank. Like, oh, wow, look at that. It's sort of shocking when you see it, even though you can see it every day, but when you see it on TV, it's like, oh, okay, yep. That's what we do. 

Shawna  53:40

You know? I think that is the key. Is the doing regular stuff. Like, it doesn't have to be the topic, right? Yeah, it's just people living their lives. But then when you get to see it represented, you feel seen a little bit like, okay,

Victoria S.  53:52

okay, here we are. 

Shawna  53:59

Well, thank you both so much for joining us and for sharing your insights. I really do value conversations like these, not just because of the identity I hold or the spaces we're in, but I think it's so meaningful. What 276% growth in terms of how folks identify as mixed race or multiracial. Now it is definitely a relevant topic. It's undeniable that the population of mixed race folks are growing. And as you've discovered, the number of interracial, inter ethnic marriages and partnerships are definitely growing so super relevant,

Victoria S.  54:43

and frankly, we didn't want to beat people over the head with it, even though, you know, we talk about it, but, and this is just sort of me on my soapbox a little bit, I think that's why the politics, some of them, are the way they are right now, as far as the fear because of the numbers that we're talking about right like we're talking about. The changing which, you know, this was forecasted years, decades ago, right? We saw this coming. But I think that's why folks are scared and trying to, you know, turn back the hands of time to make it seem like this is not happening. And that's why it was important that we ended and included the strengths, and we talked about leading with love, because so much of what we're experiencing is coming from a place of hate, right? And just hate for the fact that people are loving each other, and I think that's why so much of what we're experiencing now is the opposite, and trying to undo it, because it's trying to go backwards to this sort of homogeneous way of existing that just isn't real anymore. No,

Shawna  55:49

I agree with you a lot of what I talk about in workshops or when I do talks and things has to do with two things. One, humans like homeostasis. It's very unnerving when things change and you're not ready for it. And two, a lot of what we're experiencing, I believe, is very fear based. And so people have actual biological reactions when they're afraid. And we're seeing some of these things spell out, and it's just sort of materializing in a way that is showing that fear. And so if people could lead with love Victoria, like, what a difference it would make. So yeah, I super appreciate that you brought up that point. There is absolutely strength there. And

Kat Aragon  56:32

I just thank you guys for pouring your time into your studies and wanting to educate so many of us on it, too, and your findings, and it's just been so eye opening into like even just looking at studies and the level of diversity you wanted to bring to it, is so appreciated. Thank you for your work.

Shawna  56:48

Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Bye.

Shawna  56:51

Another Amazing interview in the books. Y'all conversations like this don't just stay on the page or in the interview, they ripple outward into our families, our friendships, our choices, our questions. I love holding space like this, because for us as complex humans, bringing the layered lived experiences with us, they often get overlooked in the headlines, and these stories matter. Your story matters. You may have heard but we're kind of getting close to the end of season five, and typically at the end of the season, I do a mixtape episode with my co hosts, but this time, I've got something very special planned. In the final episode, I'll be joined by my husband and my kids. You've heard me talk about them, so it's so perfect that they're going to help me wrap the season with a real, open family conversation. But I'd like to include you in that too. So if there's something that you've been wondering about, thinking about, something you want to reflect on, or a question you'd like us to talk about, please send it my way. You can find a text link in the show notes, or you can go to true culture consulting.com and use the contact form there. Just be sure to send me your questions, your comments and all that good stuff by June 21 so that I can weave it into that final episode. And if you enjoyed this episode and you want to see us have a conversation, the full episode is available on YouTube, so you can find that link in the show notes too. Finally, come follow along on Instagram at our True Colors underscore podcast, where I will keep sharing takeaways behind the scenes, moments and updates on my upcoming book, even after the season ends. Until next time, stay curious, stay connected and keep embracing your true colors. Spread the Love y'all. I'll talk to you soon. 

Outro  59:08

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