We read with great interest your article in the Family section (Mum always said I was white, like her, 18 March). While it is an unusual story, it is by no means rare for children to live in families that are not the same in appearance as themselves.

The charity People In Harmony exists to support people of mixed race and mixed families/partnerships. In the course of our work we encounter people who struggle with their identity and look very different from their parents and other siblings. Sometimes this is just a matter of siblings having different skin tones – from white, through brown to black. On other occasions children may indeed be “genetic throwbacks” to use the terminology in the article.

As a society we are increasingly mixed, and the mixed-race group is growing proportionately faster than any other. Many children now have a grandparent who is of a skin colour that does not reflect their own or their parents’. The search for identity by young people is more complex than ever. But acceptance of mixedness is often problematic for the individual and also for society at large, many members of which still want to see mixed-race people as outsiders.

This has to change, and People In Harmony welcomes new members who want to work with us in this cause.

Susann Savidge

Chair, People in Harmony

• Re Arwa Mahdawi’s article (G2, 22 March, I am mixed race, Indian (from West Bengal) and white. A very polite Bangladeshi 10-year-old pupil of mine once told me that actually I was a white lady, because I walked like a white lady and had short hair like a white lady. No one in her family looked like me, she continued. It was September and I was actually darker than she was, having spent the summer outdoors!

Janice Gupta Gwilliam

Malton, Yorkshire

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