People are allowed to identify with racial groups other than the ones assigned to them

The argument

Transracial individuals make their newly identified race the main part of their daily life and concept of self. Their identity is valid and should be more widely accepted because those individuals struggle with their self-perception. People have the ability to identify with that race they choose, and most transracial individuals transition in order to feel more like themselves. Transracial people have an extensive knowledge of the race they identify as, and practice cultural traditions to gain more knowledge. Individuals can identify with other racial and ethnic groups than their own.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Identifying as another race is a form of cultural appropriation. Transracial people take the best aspects of a minority culture but ignore the history of hate crime, discrimination, and violence. Identifying as a minority race as a white person ignores the hardships that racial group has experienced.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Depth of feeling is offered as though it settled the question. That an identification is sincere and central to someone's sense of self establishes how it is held, not what it is an identification with, and the premise gives no account of what race would have to be for the claim to succeed. The implicit parallel with gender identity is never argued either: race as used in these debates is a category assigned by others and tied to ancestry and to how one's forebears were treated, which is what makes the analogy contested rather than obvious. [Rejecting P2] The second premise assumes its conclusion — that people can identify with a race they choose is precisely the point in dispute — and the support offered is the weakest available. Knowledge of a culture and participation in its traditions are things anyone may acquire, so if they were sufficient the category would extend to any well-informed participant, which nobody proposes. [Rejecting C] The conclusion also passes over what the objection is about. The cases that prompted this debate involved people presenting as members of a group in settings where membership carried standing, so the counter's charge concerns benefit and history rather than sincerity — and the premises answer only the sincerity.