“The Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People”
by Dr. Maria P.P. Root

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