Saturday 28 November 2015

A word describes the person whose homeland/origins cannot be assurely identified

In the U.S., where historically race was a more important social distinction than ethnicity or class (or, given the hypodescent standard, even skin color), people who are racially ambiguous are a subject of interest, both in popular (“10 most racially ambiguous celebrities!”) and intellectual (“What Are You?”: Racial Ambiguity and the Social Construction of Race in the US) sources.



By extension, ethnically ambiguous would be a broader application of the concept, and to my surprise, turns up almost the same number of Google.com results. A 2003 New York Times article suggests




ethnically neutral, diverse or ambiguous




I think few people would self-identify as "ambiguous" alone as a description of phenotype, or if they do it would be interpreted as androgynous. Rather, this is a label others apply. People who know they are of mixed descent could self-identify as multiracial (U.S. Census category), mixed race, or multiethnic— but in a modern professional setting in the U.S., calling attention to such characteristics is usually inappropriate and even outrĂ©.



For similar reasons, terms like mulatto or quadroon are considered outdated, and may be taken to be offensive.

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