“I think it means that when someone looks at you, they can’t automatically…tell what you are by your physical appearance…?”
“I think racial ambiguity is when you don’t fit neatly into the categories that people grew up like internalizing because race is a construct, it’s not real, but we’ve made up these categories. And when you don’t fit very nicely into one of those, then someone can’t say, ‘Hey, you fit my image of what white looks like,’ or what this and that looks like. They don’t know what to label you.”
“I would say when somebody can’t identify what your race is so somebody looking from the outside. You can identify what my race is being like, “Could be this or he could be this.”
“I would say it would be someone who other people find it difficult to categorize in an ethnic or racial identity.”
“I would probably say…I guess if people have a hard time discerning like who or what you are when you first meet them. And you kind of are able to…not take on a different personal but uh…you blend in, I guess…with your surroundings. God, that sounds terrible!”
“It would probably relate to the individual’s family of origin, specifically where in the world that they come from, what particular racial background that they come from; are they White? Are they Black? Of that sort.”
“I would guess that it means that it’s difficult for other people to…label or guess your racial or ethnic background? Maybe you could pass for different identities.”
“Not being certain about your racial identity or it could be perceived in different ways or in many ways – in more than one way.”
The Ethnic Ambiguity Study 