It started as we entered the country, while my passport was being checked.
"You are from India." (I couldn't tell if it was a question or statement)
No, England. (I have a British passport)
"No, you are Indian!"
No, I'm English.
"No. Indian! (No, I'm English). Pakistan? (No, I'm English). Afghanistan? (No, I'm English)."
"Your father, where he from?"
The Caribbean, I replied.
"Caribbean...?"
The Moroccan border guard seemed a mixture of satisfied I didn't say England, and confused because he wasn't expecting that answer.
This scenario reoccurred many times while we holidayed in Marrakech. Men - possibly trying to be polite and start a conversation - begin by asking me where I came from, I say England, and a familiar response eventually comes forth (whether worded this way or not): "But where are you really from?"
Brief background. I'm English (don't even question it) to immigrant parents. They're from the caribbean - Trinidad & Tobago. So were my grandparents. My great-grandparents were immigrants - indentured labourers from either India or Ceylon (it was Ceylon back then) in the 19th century, around about the time slavery was abolished. In fact that's why the caribbean colonies needed their indentured labour. Someone had to grow all that sugarcane for the Brits now they didn't have slaves to do it for them.
Anyway, the short version is that I look 'Indian' (the subcontinent), and that is backed up by DNA, as all the way down the line you can trace my ancestors back to there. So calling me Indian is ok right?
No.
I've never been to India. My parents have never been to India. My grandparents never went to India. My great -grandparents may not have even come from India.
So on a basic level, saying (telling me) I am Indian is incorrect, as my family haven't set foot there in at least four generations.
My connection to India is probably about as strong as anyone in the UK who enjoys eating curry, cuisine which is pretty much a British national dish anyway. I do have a greater sense of connection to Trinidad (check out my Macaroni Pie recipe - I even got it published in The Guardian), but that is still my family background. I am English, proudly so, and don't ever try and tell me I am not.
My sense of English identity has been forged in part through the furnace of racism. Like any brown kid growing up in seventies/eighties Britain, racism - whether on the playground or the adult world - was something we had to deal with. My parents didn't give me much direction on how to deal with this, and what I do remember were contradictory responses at different times.
So early on, I decided that I was English. I'm a stubborn fellow, so I have never let anyone tell me differently. This frustrates a lot of people who are probably just making conversation, hence the phrase "But where are you really from?" trying to direct the conversation to hearing tales of 'exotic' Indian ancestors.
In the past, I've asked white people about why they might ask me this. Many have had a similar response - they feel their background is so boring that they find mine & other brown people's much more interesting in comparison. They say it with almost a sense of jealousy. Their intention isn't to define me as different, or even as not being English. But that is what they are doing by not accepting my simple response to a question of where I am from as 'England'.
My daughter will be the next generation to experience whatever version of identity politics that occurs in her lifetime. She is mixed race, and ethnically a very binary mix of 'Indian' (see previously) and white European.
But that is such a small part of her story. I have already detailed my side of the DNA family tree. On her mother's side while 'White European' is the catchall term, my wife is a New Zealander of British and Irish descent. We joke that our daughter - with ancestry from India, Caribbean, New Zealand, and the UK - is a distillation of the former British Empire.
For my statement that I am English, I have always had one fact to latch onto to back that up: I was born in England. While my daughter is being brought up in England, she was not born here - she was born in New Zealand of dual nationality. In the UK she will always be classed a foreign born citizen - a demographic the likes of the Daily Mail often likes to trot out to illustrate how out of control immigration is (this is a demographic that also includes the likes of children of armed forces personnel born abroad - hence the high number of German born Brits in the UK).
While my daughter will probably never be assumed to be 'Indian' as she is very light skinned, she does look 'mixed race'. It's a popular look these days. There are many stars who (at first glance at least) appear to be of indeterminate ethnicity, such as Vin Deisel, Rashida Jones, Dwyane 'The Rock' Johnson, and Jessica Alba. But however my daughter ends up identifying herself - if indeed as anything - will her choice be questioned like my own has?
In the UK at least, I'm not sure it will. The society I live in now is very different from the one I grew up in. Seventies Britain still hadn't grasped the concept of second generation immigrants. While it's a term I dislike, because it still classes me as an immigrant, at least it acknowledges that children born of immigrants are culturally different from their parents.
While I don't feel defining myself as English would be questioned in mainstream British society anymore, I continue to experience this in countries ranging from Turkey and Morocco, to New Zealand and America.
I haven't really spoken to my nearly 4-year-old daughter about race that much yet. She has previously stated that she is "white like mummy". I responded with "No. you're light like mummy, but brown like daddy", which she accepts. While we live in a largely white English market town, there have been an influx of people who have moved here from London, and the racial mix is increasingly diverse. As well as white children, my daughter also has close friends who are of Chinese and Zulu descent.
I will bide my time and see what issues - if any - she has with racial identity, and empower her to discover and feel confident in who she is - whoever that turns out to be.
An earlier version of this post was originally published on Man vs. Pink. Please join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter.