The world is multicultural so transracial is a legitimate identity

The argument

Proponents of this position begin from an observation about populations rather than about identity. Various cultures and races are being mixed more often throughout the world, and many countries, such as the United States, have many different mixed cultures and races within the country. If the categories were ever clean, the argument runs, they are not now, and a system of classification that no longer matches the population it describes has lost much of its claim to authority. On this view, segmenting people based on their race is outdated: not merely objectionable, but overtaken by the blending it was designed to sort. The second step moves from populations to individuals. People are exposed to various parts of different cultures throughout their lives, in language, food, music and the ordinary habits of the places they live. What follows is that their actions and traditions cannot be credited to just one country or race. If someone's practices are already drawn from several sources, then the single racial label assigned to them describes their ancestry rather than the life they actually lead, and the label and the person have come apart. The argument then presses an analogy. Cultural borrowing of this kind is not usually treated as an offence, and no one is accused of cultural appropriation when using aspects of other cultures such as language and food. Since those borrowings pass without objection, proponents hold that consistency requires accepting the further step, and that no one should be criticized for identifying as transracial. The claim is that the difference between adopting a culture's practices and claiming its identity is one of degree rather than of kind, and that a world already comfortable with the first has no principled ground on which to reject the second.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Even though the world is becoming more diverse, it is not an excuse to erase the violent histories different racial groups have experienced. Using various cultural traditions is not the same as completely identifying as that race. One simply borrows customs from that group, while identifying as transracial inappropriately places that person with a race they do not belong to, nor share the history of. It is acceptable to use appropriately use aspects from other cultures, but not to completely switch your identifying race.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] Each racial group has experienced a unique history, so identifying as transracial is insulting to that culture. [Rejecting P3] Using aspects of other races is not the same as being transracial.