"When I worked in adoption, I coined the phase "ambiguous ethnicity" to refer to individuals whose racial or ethnic identity was not clear cut to other people who saw them."

The term "ambiguous ethnicity" addresses my sense that Americans {UnitedStaters} use visual clues as a means of easily if not automatically identifying the racial group of individuals they see. According to my definition, a person is of 'ambiguous ethnicity' when another individual or other individuals have difficulty identifying that person's race or ethnicity {"ethnicity" in the sense of Latino/Latina} based on the use of the visual clues Americans {imo} are informally taught to rely on such as the person's skin color, hair texture, the shape of the eyes, the shape of the nose, and {at least with regard to traditional attire}, the person's clothing.

Imo, the term 'ambiguous ethnicity' is not as important as the attention I sought to give to the dynamics that these children, teens and adults might encounter because their racial and ethnic ancestries seem to be difficult for some other folks to 'categorize'.

If it was unclear to folks reading this, let me try again to be clear- I do not support the use of visual clues to identify individuals. However, because I believe that people used and still use visual clues to racially categorize other individuals, I would be remiss if I did not raise this subject in the context of helping folks discuss issues of self-esteem building and racism. I believed and still believe that the subject of visual clues needs to be addressed.

Fwiw, I coined this phrase in the context of facilitating discussions on promoting self-esteem in transracially adoptive children. At that time {late 1980s to early 1990s} the primary adults who attended these sessions were White adults who were adopting or had adopted children who are non-White. In addition to children of Black/White ancestry, transracial adoptive parents were/had adopted children who had two Black birth parents, children from Asian nations, children from Central & South America, children from American Indian ancestries, and other children. As a result of the feedback that I received on these sessions, my observations, and my gut reactions to these sessions, I believe that the use of this "ambiguous ethnicity" phrase helped raise the awareness of participants in these sessions to this issue and led to emotionally & intellectually challenging, insightful, interesting, and helpful discussions.

I stand by my opinion that being of 'ambiguous ethnicity' can be challenging in a number of ways for those individuals to whom I was referring. However, I do not now, nor did I in the past, advocate that 'ambiguous ethnicity' should be used as a formal or informal racial or ethnic group referent for these persons.

If dianavan and others were insulted by my use of this phrase, I hope that my comments clarify that no insult was intended. If dianavan and others still feel insulted by my use of this phrase, I'm sorry about that, but in the context that I've stated, I intend to continue to use it.

That said, I'm not emotionally invested in that term . If someone wants to use another term such as "American hybrid" to describe this population of individuals {as a means of addressing the issues I raised, or for her or his own reasons}, so be it.