I've got a Fillipina Mum, a white Dad, freckles, Asian eyes was born in Barnet and identify myself as British. But why, in 2011, do people still feel the need to put me into neat little ethnic boxes?

“So where were you born?”

“… Barnet”

“No, I mean, you know…(motions to face) your roots”

very interesting reading , contunies here - http://www.sabotagetimes.com/life/confessions-of-a-mongrel/

Let's refrain from flaming others. It's not necessary to post on topics which you find offensive or boring.

I am not among the pessimists. I was reading this yesterday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/us/30mixed.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

My only knock on these clubs is that they describe who or what their members are by race, which is a pretty superficial description. Maybe better they all join the Philosophy Club.

I am not among the pessimists. I was reading this yesterday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/us/30mixed.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

My only knock on these clubs is that they describe who or what their members are by race, which is a pretty superficial description. Maybe better they all join the Philosophy Club.

My elder daughter is the product of me (English) and her Spanish mum.

As a child she strongly asserted her nationality - 'I am ENGLISH' whenever someone asked. That was not necessarily because of her strange parents, but at five years old she was in Iran, running around with all the local kids (easy to spot - one blonde head among twenty or thirty black-haired ones). She was treated as one of the crowd (until the revolution), was fluent in Farsi and so on, although attending the British School in Shiraz. But being independent and bloody-minded (traits obviously derived from her mum) she asserted her nationality loudly. Now she teaches French and Spanish in a fancy school and cannot remember much of Iran.

My second daughter - now 2 1/4 years old - has a filipina mother, but I intend to take her through much the same process as her sister - maybe not so much education abroad, but good schools in UK and British university. Then she'll be set to do whatever she wants as well.

Don't know if she'll receive any prejudicial comments. Cambridge, where I live in the UK, is a very cosmopolitan town, with thousands of students from all over the world - not only at the university, but at many language schools and boarding schools in the town. It's a great place to live.

What our lives will be like back home is in the future, but I am confident that we'll be OK.

('Cos I'll smash anyone who looks sideways at us)

I am not among the pessimists. I was reading this yesterday:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/us/30mixed.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

My only knock on these clubs is that they describe who or what their members are by race, which is a pretty superficial description. Maybe better they all join the Philosophy Club.

To me, they are all American. Is anything else needed?

When my wife and daughter go with me to UK, they will reside there for a time and, I hope, take out British citizenship. Then call themselves what they like, filipina, British, British of Philippine extraction, female, whatever. It doesn't matter.

David Cameron says that multi-culturism hasn't worked in the UK. When I was a kid (and later) I never asked where the other kids were from, where their parents were from. We played with the ones we liked, beat up the ones we didn't, irrespective of colour, race or creed.