Intention

Inform the audience about the challenges of having a mixed heritage

In her article, “I’m More Than An ‘Other’”, Meghan Markle aims to inform the readers about the challenges she faced as a biracial woman. To achieve this intention, Markle often uses ethos and pathos, as she appeals to her own experiences as a biracial woman and describes several situations in which she encountered prejudice and racism.

Markle describes how, in the seventh grade, she was asked to clarify her ethnicity on a census that did not have a box designating her ethnicity (ll. 80-83). This left her confused and feeling like she had to choose one parent over the other (87-90). This story helps Markle create a sense of compassion for children who face similar situations and give the audience a sense of how early in life a person of mixed heritage can encounter prejudice.

Markle uses analogy to explain how being biracial affected her self-identity and how others related to her: “Just as black and white, when mixed, make grey, in many ways that’s what it did to my self-identity: it created a murky area of who I was, a haze around how people connected with me” (ll. 254-258). This suggest...