Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage

Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage

I have the right:

-not to justify my existence in this world

-not to keep the races separate within me

-not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with my physical ambiguity

-not to justify my ethnic legitimacy

I have the right:

-to identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify

-to identify myself differently than how my parents identify me

-to identify myself differently than my brothers and sisters

-to identify myself different in different situations

I have the right:

-to create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial

-to change my identity over my lifetime – and more than once

-to have loyalties and identify with more than one group of people

-to freely choose whom I befriend and love

© Maria P. P. Root, PhD, 1993, 1994

(also see “A Transracially-Adopted Child’s Bill of Rights“)