I had hoped to post on the first day of 2013, but posting a day late is better than not posting at all--and since I'm heading out of town to go to MLA (big academic conference for English & Lit & Language profs) and will have sporadic internet availability while in Boston, I figured I should post something that is both meaningful for a new year and something I've been wanting to post for quite some time now:
Dr. Maria Root's Bill of Rights for People of Mixed Heritage.
Essentially, it's the Bill of Rights for Mixed Race America.
Because I've just finished a draft of my Tiger Woods chapter, I've been reading a variety of essays, articles, books, blogs, and esoterica about Tiger Woods and the many opinions that people have ab out Woods. But I think Thea Lim of Racialicious sums it up best:
“Tiger Woods seems like a jackass. . . . But that’s no reason to deny him the right to self-identify.”
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
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 justify my ethnic legitimacy.
Not to be responsible for people’s discomfort with
my physical or ethnic ambiguity.
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 differently in different
situations.
I
HAVE THE RIGHT...
To create a vocabulary to communicate about
being multiracial or multiethnic.
To change my identity over my lifetime--and more
than once.
To have loyalties and identification with more
than one group of people.
To freely choose whom I befriend and love
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