Week 6: Multiraciality
Channel: criticalpraxis
Date: 2012-09-17

Week 6 (9/17-9/21): Topic set by Heather Ireland. Please read Maria P. P. Root's "Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People." What are some initial thoughts that come to mind in reading Root's Bill? How do you understand critical mixed race studies? Discuss the intersections of critical race theory and mixed race studies and the social construction of race: what is critical in critical mixed race studies? How can we practice anti-racism while educating simultaneously about the social construction of race? How can we avoid generalizations and simplifications about doing race? How is doing race complicated by gender,class status, sexual and gender identity? What would a research project look like that embraces Root's Bill of Rights?

"Bill of Rights for Racially Mixed People" by Maria P. P. Root

RESISTANCE
I have the right not to justify my existence in this world.
I have the right not to keep the races separate within me.
I have the right not to be responsible for people's discomfort with my physical ambiguity.
I have the right not to justify my ethnic legitimacy.
 
REVOLUTION
I have the right to identify myself differently than strangers expect me to identify.
I have the right to identify myself differently than how my parents identify me.
I have the right to identify myself differently than my brothers and sisters.
I have the right to identify myself differently in different situations.
 
CHANGE
I have the right to create a vocabulary to communicate about being multiracial. 
I have the right to change my identity over my lifetime--and more than once.
I have the right to have loyalties and identify with more than one group of people.
I have the right to freely choose whom I befriend and love.

Maria P. P. Root, Ed. The Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996.