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I was neither black enough for the black kids or Dominican enough for the Dominican kids. I didn't have a safe category.

So, Mexico, Brazil, they wanted their national culture to be 'blackish' - really brown, a beautiful brown blend. And finally, I discovered that in each of these societies the people at the bottom are the darkest skinned with the most African features.

No one thinks of Mexico and Peru as black. But Mexico and Peru together got 700,000 Africans in the slave trade. The coast of Acapulco was a black city in the 1870s. And the Veracruz Coast on the gulf of Mexico and the Costa Chica, south of Acapulco are traditional black lands.

Americans have their issues with skin colour, even within the black community, with light and dark skin; it's crazy - but no one's oblivious to it.

But you see, our society is still trapped in this binary, black/white logic and that has had some very positive implications for our generation. It's had some very negative ones as well and one of the negative ones is that it creates enormous identity problems for people who have one black ancestor and all white ancestors for example.

I've always known that my father's father and grandfather and grandmother were from Mexico. I've never denied it. I've always said it.

In America one drop of black ancestry makes you black.

It comes down to this: black people were stripped of our identities when we were brought here, and it's been a quest since then to define who we are.

People always ask me: 'Do you have black in you? Do you have Spanish in you?'

Everyone has a Latino inside them.