I grew up experiencing what many poor young immigrants face - bad schools, hunger, poverty, a lack of resources - but eventually managed to pay my way through college and work now as a musician and teacher, often very white communities. "My mother doesn't speak English and so when I am home all we speak is Spanish and act like a bunch of rowdy, tight knit Colombians. when she was 9 years old, and she says that while she doesn't consider herself white, she gets treated like she's white all the time: Natalia Romero echoes some of those feelings. I've never had an answer that I can say with confidence I still don't know what I'm allowed to claim." "You know that question we always get asked? 'What are you?' Well, I still don't know. It may sound strange - and there are so many layers to this that are hard to unpack - but I think what it comes down to is: they have more of a claim to 'blackness' than I ever will and therefore have the power to tell me I don't belong, I'm not enough, that I should stay on the white side of the identity line. "It's a vulnerable experience, but it becomes even harder when I'm with black Americans. But I don't identify as 100% white, so there always comes a time in the conversation or relationship where I need to 'out' myself and tell them that I'm biracial. "White people like to believe I'm Caucasian like them I think it makes their life less complicated. She told us what it's like for her to interact with different groups as a light-skinned biracial woman: Helen Seely is originally from California. Now that I live in New York City, where if you're black people assume you are first generation Caribbean, I often have to remind people that my dad is black American and so am I." But then when folks would meet my mum they would say things like, 'Oh I thought you were black!' or 'You do look Jamaican!' And I would tell people I'm still black and clearly Jamaicans look like black Americans because we are both the descendants of enslaved West Africans. Both my parents are black, so no one ever asked 'What are you?'. We ate mostly Jamaican food (prepared by both our mother and father), our Jamaican family lived with us growing up, and it was my mother that told us Anansi stories and other tales or sayings popular in Jamaica. "Culturally we grew up as Jamaican as two California-born black American children could have in the Bay Area. 'I'm so so white.' After much therapy, I'm happy and comfortable in my brown skin, though I'm still working out how others perceive me as this Other, Asian person." "This new knowledge was a huge blow to my identity and, admittedly, to my self esteem. So, at age 28 I learned that I was not half white but all Filipina. I didn't find out until I tried to apply for a passport in my late twenties and the truth came out. As it turns out, my biological father was a Filipino man whom I've never met. After she divorced her first husband and re-married my stepdad from Michigan, my whiteness became cemented. My mom wanted me to speak perfect English, so never spoke anything but to me. I embraced this 'hapa-haole' identity (as they say in Hawaii), and loved my ethnic ambiguity. I grew up thinking that I was half-Filipina and half-white, under the impression that my mom's first husband was my biological father. "I was born in the Philippines and moved to Hawaii when I was three. You act white.' And I saltily retort, 'Why? Because I'm not doing your lawn, or taking care of your kids? You need to broaden your idea of what Latina means.' " And white acquaintances often say, 'You are white. I married a white guy and had children who are blonde and blue eyed, and I'm frequently asked if I'm the nanny or babysitter. In shops, I'm treated like every other Latina, followed around, then ignored at the counter. I identify with my mother's culture and country as well as American culture. Even my cousin said a few weeks ago, 'Well, you aren't really Spanish, because your dad is white.' Which gutted me, truly. My Spanish is atrocious and I grew up in rural PA. "But truthfully, I don't feel like I fit with Latinas either. It always felt like the undercurrent of that question was, 'You aren't white, but you aren't black. When I was young (20s) and living in the city, I would get asked multiple times a day where I was from, where my people were from, because Allentown, Pennsylvania, clearly wasn't the answer they were looking for. I've always felt liminal, like I drift between race and culture. "My mother is a Panamanian immigrant and my father is a white guy from Pennsylvania.