Hilda Fish,

I also thank you for your post and apologize for those of my race who didn't accept you as a sista sista.

When I worked in adoption, one workshop that I often facilitated was the special needs and concerns of persons with 'ambiguous ethnicity' [those persons whose race & ethnicity could not specifically or 'accurately' determined by the culturally determined visual clues that most people instinctively use: skin color, hair texture, and facial features].

Because I am a brown skinned African American, folks don't have any difficult racially categorizing me. However, I know a number of African Americans who have 'ambiguous ethnicity'. Some of these people are of first generation mixed ancestry {meaning they have one birth parent who is Black and another birth parent who is another race/or ethnicity such as Latino}. However, some of these individuals are very light skinned African Americans who have two Black birthparents, both of whom are also very light skinned. And other individuals I know whose race and ethnicity is difficult to determine are non-African Americans.

At several national adoption conferences I met transracial adopted parents [Whites who adopted children who are non-White} who had adopted children from Latin America. While these children had no documented Black ancestry, their adopted parents described them as being brown skinned. These parents shared their surprise and dismay that their children had been 'labeled' as Black and had 'even' suffered racially offensive taunting. Some of these transracial adopted parents thought that by going to their children's school and providing classroom presentations on their children's Latin American culture, that would solve the problem. One recommendation that I gave these parents was that they prepare their children for racial taunting the same way that Black parents [should] prepare their childern. Even though these children from Latin America may not have been considered Black in their home country, since they were going to be mis-categorized [??} as Black in the United States, they'd better have a strong sense of self-esteem and and in addition to knowing about and feeling good about the group that their birth parents come from, they'd be better off if they knew about and felt good about Black people in general. If they have positive feelings about Black people, if someone called them Black, they could consider that a compliment and not an insult...

And that's a very short form of a long seminar...

Mudcat posters might be interested in the story of Walter White, a very light skinned African American who played a very important role in the NAACP, including attending Klu Klux Klan rallies as a 'White man' and reporting back what plans were being made.

Click here for more information on this prominent African American:
Walter White