Let me start off by saying that I am Jamaican. I was born there, I grew up there, and I spent the majority of my adult life there. My self-identity is anchored in Jamaica - its culture, its history, its legacy. My worldview was shaped from the perspective of one living in Jamaica, and I embrace that worldview and identity fully.

That said, I like to see myself as a thinker. I don't always live up to that, but I try. Among other things, that means I question everything. Even the things most people accept as fact. I don't remember how old I was when I started asking questions such as, "If Columbus arrived on the beach at Discovery Bay, St. Ann and found the Arawaks, how is it possible that he is credited for 'discovering' the West Indies? The Indians were here first." I don't remember the reaction from my teachers at the time, but I do remember that my father and mother exchanged looks that conveyed volumes I didn't quite understand.

Incidentally, as we are talking about "race", it might be mildly interesting to note that I was once told that I have some of that same Indian blood running through my veins. One day I'd like to do that ancestry test just to see if what I've heard is true. Until then, I accept that part of Jamaica's history as my own because you can't talk about Jamaica without talking about the Arawaks; or as they are now known - the Taino. By the way, those Taino feature heavily in the Jamaican Coat Of Arms…

To get back to the discussion though, "race" is a wholly different conversation for us Caribbeanites. I can't speak for all Caribbean people, but I am fairly confident that you will find most Caribbean people are less concerned with "race". If anything, they are more concerned with "shade". For example, in Jamaica I am what is known as a "brownin'" because the shade of my skin is somewhat on the lighter end of the scale. That label also says a little something about where I grew up which was not in the inner-city but the suburbs. "Middle class brownin'" - that's me. I used to be ashamed of that label. Now I'm just ashamed that it took emigration for me to appreciate how much of a part of the fabric of Jamaican culture I am - high school peer pressure be damned. It's not unusual, either - I've known several people who have discovered after leaving Jamaica just how much Jamaica is an integral part of who they are.

Side note: Jamaicans have a saying for that "Want-y, want-y cyaan get-y; and get-y get-y nuh waant it"; the direct translation is: "Those who want it, can't get it; and those who have it, don't want it". In this context, it's a similar sentiment to not knowing what you have until you've lost it.

"Out of Many, One People"

The Jamaican national motto thoroughly embodies the history of the island. Of all the other islands in the Caribbean, I believe Jamaica has a most vastly diverse ethnic spread. The Taino, the Europeans, the West Africans, and the middle and far easterners who came as indentured servants and merchants after Slavery was abolished. If we have a discrimination problem at all, it's with shade, class, and gender; when "race" issues arise, they are certainly not on the scale and magnitude that I see exhibited in the United States.

When I was growing up, our neighbours and our relationships with them exemplified this melding of "races". Immediately to the North of my house was a family whose ancestry I never quite understood beyond "Spanish and Panamanian roots" though they spoke with a very decided Jamaican accent (and, by the way, they looked "white"). Across the road, to the West, was a little girl whose grandmother obviously had Indian of some kind in her, but also spoke with a very Jamaican accent. She looked mixed - Indian and black maybe. I don't know. The point is, I never asked, it never came up, we never talked about it, and it was unimportant. In retrospect, they were obviously physically different from us and each other, but as is evidenced when I tried to explain those "racial" differences, they were so obscure that I have no memory of the words we might have used back then to describe those differences - not then, not now. They were simply "Neighbour A" and "Neighbour B", and we were "us."

To make matters worse, in my very own household, "race" was as clear as mud. My father looks oriental or pale-skinned-Indian, depending on how you look at it (which is probably the Taino in him), my mother is obviously mixed with something else too (as it turns out, her father was white) and here I came along and I look completely different from them both. In fact, I spent several years wondering if I was adopted because I looked that different. It ought not to be surprising, then, to see how hard it is for me to understand "race" as a separatist concept because my own family - immediate and extended - was a conglomeration of "races." Incidentally, my family is obviously mixed with African ancestry making us "African American" within the context of the United States because of that whole "drop of blood" nonsense. Never heard of that rule? It's called the "One-drop rule" and it states that if you have even one drop of African blood in your ancestral lines, you are essentially black (Negroid was the term used at the time). The worst aspect of that rule is that it was a law enacted in the early 20th century. In case you're wondering, that's within the space of two lifetimes - your great grand parents could probably tell you about it.

"A culture shock to end all culture shocks"

So with all this in mind, here I am arriving in the United States as the wife-to-be of a white American citizen and soldier and it is a culture shock to end all culture shocks. Suddenly, I find that my "race" is an issue. Suddenly I see my "race" - my colour - where I didn't before. Suddenly I am hubby's "black wife," and suddenly I am being officially classified as African American. And this in and of itself is a culture-shock since I learned in school that terms such as "African" and "American" refer to geographic origin. Thus, an African American is a confused person from two separate continents at the same time. I mean, as far as I am concerned, either you're African or you're American; you can't really be both. At least not in my book. And I am far from confused - I am Jamaican.

But then I realise that this is "political correctness" at work. That the term African American, and indeed all other forms of American we now have - including Caribbean American - is an apparently neutral, non-offensive way to refer to people of different "race" compositions in the United States. They don't have the luxury of not being classified at all and just being simply "American". It's a lot more words, but I don't see why I can't be referred to as "a Jamaican living in the United States". Well, outside of the fact that those words don't really tell anyone what "race" I am, that is. And that's the point, isn't it? To separate based on "race"?

Nevertheless, "politically correct racial terms" weren't a reality to me until I landed here and someone ticked a box. And I thought to myself, "Wait a minute … I am Jamaican, not this 'African American' nonsense." Suddenly, I wasn't sure - it felt like my identity was now compromised and I had a choice: I either conform and be called "African American", or not conform and be doomed to constant irritation for the rest of my life. I chose constant irritation because I am Jamaican. Every time I can check something other than African American, I do so (for example, I really like having the option of "Other"). And if I can get away with not selecting anything at all, I do so because I think the whole basis of "race" classification is odious.

Adding insult to injury (not necessarily mine), I quickly sought to ensure that I am easily distinguishable from your average African American. This may sound prejudicial and in a way it is, but please - bear with me for a paragraph or two more, would you? You see, I don't personally identify with the group known as "African American". I observed several attitudes and behaviors that I grew up thinking were demonstrative of a lack of decorum and refinement. It never once occurred to me that I was acting and thinking with prejudice. That I sought to separate myself made me feel uncomfortable, but in my mind it was a far less uncomfortable feeling than what I felt around African Americans. As a black woman, I had never felt so isolated as when I found myself amongst black Americans. It was, as I mentioned, a culture shock to end all culture shocks.

To make it worse, I was clearly out of place amongst my husband's "white world" too. I'd never before found myself concerned with "race", but it's hard to not notice when you're the only black person in a group of white people. It's like being the only girl in a pool hall. Still, I felt oddly less out of place with the in-laws than with the other black Americans. As I said, I often compared it to being the only girl in a pool hall; a position I was familiar with for a while in my early adult years.

Essentially, you have something in common with the group even though you stick out like a sore thumb. It wasn't uncomfortable to be the only girl, and it was kind of nice to be accepted as part of the gang. But then it got weird because I noticed when the men started hitting on or eyeing other women.

That is not to say that my in-laws are prejudiced. They aren't. Not in the least. But they are white and that makes them privileged - and privileged without realizing it. In a much similar way, I am also privileged. The whole period of segregation is not a reality in my worldview. And I don't have the burden of institutional racism as a common theme in my childhood. My parents didn't have to teach me to be humble and passive in the face of confrontation with authority, whatever its form. And it scares me to think that the quiet disdain I had towards Jamaican policemen (because police corruption is not a concept unique to the U.S.) would likely land me in an American jail. Arrogant, parvenu, aggressive, violent - these words describe how black Americans are viewed by the institutionalised "race" machinery: "Oh Em Gee. Angry black people - everywhere. Ah!"

"And that's the point now, isn't it?"

And here we are; after my years-long musings and struggles to secure my own identity, I see a little clearer now. And I find I am at a point where my earlier self would have angered me severely. And, in fact, I am angered when I see that earlier self reflected in the behaviour of others around me. I know what it is like to be where they are. I am angry because I was once that person and that person looks vile to me now.

I recently called a classmate out for uttering that "Angry Black People Everywhere" sentiment. Because you see, the point is … Black America has every right to be angry. They have a right to express that anger. And we have a responsibility to let them be angry.

And I say 'we' because even though I may understand better, I still don't identify with them. My history, my culture, my identity is so far different that I have little in common with them. We have slavery in common, but for me and mine, that was over and done with more than a century ago. I grew up with minute echoes from that past; so small I missed much of it. And white America has no frame of reference for those echoes at all.

Black Americans, today, are still living with those echoes. Every time someone calls a black man a 'thug'. Every time a black boy is suspended from preschool. Every time a black boy is shot dead because the shooter felt threatened. Those echoes are still loud and long here in the United States of America.

And it is way past the time when we should ALL just stop and listen because failing to do so holds dire implications for ourselves, for our future, for our ability to empathise.

This article first published on Medium on April 9, 2014.