A black female friend once said to me, "You are not keeping it real – you are not interested in us".Even my white male friends have said, “Mate, I’m disappointed, you don't date the sisters”.In previous decades, there was lack of understanding about how to refer to people of mixed parentage, with unpalatable terms such as “half-caste”.Luckily that term was dropped in favour of “mixed race”, but the legacy of racism made some people feel uneasy about their background.It became legal in the entire United States in 1967 when the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case Loving v.Virginia that race-based restrictions on marriages violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution.

Picture: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle look at some prosthetic limbs made by the Titanic FX company during a visit to Catalyst Inc science park in Belfast where they met some of Northern Ireland's brightest young entrepreneurs.

I have family members and friends who are mixed race, and I have been intrigued to find out whether people feel accepted for who they are and what they do.

On my BBC Three Counties Radio show, I recently spoke to Stevenage-based author Charlene Shaw, who is mixed race.

She shared her experiences of growing up in a white, middle class area in Hertfordshire, and her grandparents’ struggle to accept her parents’ interracial relationship. Shaw also noticed there was a current “trend” for parents to have mixed race babies.

We need to remember it's not just about accepting different cultures but also understanding how a mixed race child can relate to their roots and heritage.