A month after Rachel Dolezal was propelled into the public spotlight in 2015, the American writer Ta-Nehisi Coates' book Between the World and Me came out.

It's essentially a letter to his son about the bleak realities of being black in America today.

And like one of those memories that seem so present, so real you can almost touch them, I clearly recall my white husband coming home, after he finished reading Ta-Nehisi's book.

He was standing on our back porch, and he asked me how I — a woman of Indian heritage, a woman who is undeniably brown — felt about our biological kids, who are biracial, but look outwardly white.

And when I say white, I mean they look undeniably white.

I said to him, "Last time I checked, it's still easier being white in the world. So I guess in that way, it make me happy."

When I listen to Rachel Dolezal, it makes me think of the countless times the colour of my own skin mattered, sometimes to me, sometimes to others, in good and in bad ways.

Obviously, every racial slur ever hurled my way... words like "exotic", "weird" and "different".

The time a superior told me I shouldn't refer to myself as "brown", because it was derogatory. I told her, it's just a fact. My skin is brown.

Or the number of times I've been mistaken as a nanny to my own kids. (Read: brown lady pushing around white children in a stroller).

Every person who told me I didn't get a job because of the colour of my skin.

And every person who hinted that it's the only reason I did get a job.

The time when my young daughter said, "Mama, I'm white on the outside, but Indian on the inside. My bones are brown," which was at once heartwarming and heartbreaking.

Will she — my white-looking child — tick off the "visible minority" box on the various forms we fill out as adults?

Will that be okay for her to do?

Will people mock her for it?

I don't know. And frankly, I don't know what I'll advise her to do.

Here's where Rachel Dolezal bounces back into the picture

Before she entered my world, I honestly can't think of a time I've thought about race beyond my own skin colour.

What I mean is, I didn't think about what else, what more race could mean.

And if it's just a social construct, then, well, it should be the least important part of what makes me... me.

So, it doesn't matter what you or I make of Rachel Dolezal, whether we believe her or not.

It's the ideas, what she represents, the discussion she's spurred that does matter.

It's definitely worth thinking about how to go forward, together, with all those official and unofficial identity boxes.

Do they confine us? Or define us?

Do we get to label ourselves, or do others?

And how do we bridge these gulfs that seem to be at once expanding and contracting?

I'm eager to hear what you think.