Growing up I’ve always been asked a lot of questions about my race. I guess people just can’t resist their curiosity when they see my large brown eyes and ambiguous features. And I don’t mind. I have no shame about being mixed race. I can even say I’m proud of it—being half white and half Indian adds another dimension to my person.

But if I’m being honest, I often feel wrong declaring this aspect of my identity so boldly. While my ethnic background might be mixed, my own cultural establishment hardly is. I am as white-washed as can be. My tan skin and dark hair don’t change this.

Almost immediately after sharing my mixed-race status with someone I receive questions about Indian culture. The first person my friends go to to ask about Indian culture is me. There have even been times where I’ve just simply stated my opinion “as an Indian person.” But any confidence I have displayed about this side of myself is feigned. I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

But I only realized this just recently. Just a few weeks ago, my mother and I attended the wedding of one of her close friends, who also happens to be an Indian woman. The man she was marrying was a tall, funny Jewish man. The ceremony was a beautiful celebration of cultural mixing and the hopes for world love and peace that the couple shared. It was a joy to see, a truly universally-inclusive experience.

I was enjoying myself at the reception when the reality of my racial experience hit me. Being under 25, I had been seated at a table of all the other young people. Many of these “kids” (as the older people were calling us) were fully Indian. They had been raised by Indian parents who had immigrated to the United States before they were born, immersed in the culture from which half of me technically comes.

Everyone was laughing and talking about different things. Everything from school to family was discussed. Eventually some of the Indian “kids” began sharing experiences from their childhood. It was fun listening to their interesting stories. It wasn’t until they were all laughing about how they would be talked to by their parents in their parents’ native language and respond back in English that it struck me: I couldn’t understand my mom’s native language, let alone respond back in mine. I couldn’t relate to anything else they talked about either.

I felt so different. I’d never felt so acutely aware of my racial status in my life. It felt as if I could barely be counted as Indian. I am ashamed to admit this—because as a mixed race person I am expected to know things about the cultural backgrounds from which I come. But at that moment, aside from my features and the writing on my birth certificate, I felt essentially white.

I know that I am not. The way that I was raised definitely reveals that my parents do not come from one culture. My core values and even my taste in food reveal it.

Being mixed race is confusing. It can be hard. I don’t always know what my identity is, and I don’t always feel comfortable stating it. But I guess it’s a learning process, and it just goes to show identity is not black and white and race is not its only definer.