by LOWRI TURNER

Last updated at 16:46 13 July 2007

"She's getting very dark,

isn't she?" This is what one

of my friends recently said

about my much adored -

12-week-old daughter.

She

didn't mean to be rude.

But it was a comment that struck

me with the force of a jab to the

stomach.

Immediately, I was overwhelmed by a

confusion of emotions. I felt protective,

insulted, worried, ashamed, guilty, all at

once. The reason? My lovely, wriggly,

smiley baby is mixed race.

Now, I think of myself as pretty 'right on'.

My home is on the border of the London

Republic of Hackney. I've been to the

Notting Hill Carnival, even if I found the

music a bit loud. Yet now I realise what a

'white' world I inhabit.

I am white and I have two sons from my

first marriage who are both milky complexioned and golden haired. My twin

sister, who I spend a lot of time with, has a

Danish partner. As a consequence, she has

two boys who are also pale skinned and

flaxen haired.

Into this positively Scandinavian next

generation, I have now injected a tiny,

dark-skinned, dark-haired girl. To say she

stands out is an understatement.

My colouring and that of my children has

never really been an issue before. However,

three years ago I met the man who

became my second husband and who is

the father of my daughter.

Although born

in the UK, his parents came from India in

the Sixties. This makes him British-Asian

and our daughter mixed race.

There is another more PC term for the

plump little bundle I strap to my front. She

is 'dual heritage'. It's a bit trendy, but I

quite like it. It implies a pride in coming

from two cultures, rather than the less

attractive connotations of 'mixed race'.

The usual time something is labelled

'mixed' is when it's a packet of nuts and

they've bulked out the luxury cashews with

cheaper peanuts. I'm not sure I want my

daughter to be regarded as an adulterated

version of some pure original. Still, it is the

most accepted description.

The truth is, whatever the label, the fact

there is a label proves that my daughter's

conflicting parentage matters.

At the

more frothy end of the scale, mixed-race

children are regarded as pretty dolls — white kids with a nice tan.

When I was pregnant and people

asked me about the child I was

having, and I explained her father was

Indian, they would often coo

something along the lines of: "Ooh,

she's going to be beautiful!" as if I was

discussing a new rose, made from an

exotic cross-breeding programme.

On a less benevolent level,

mixed-race children can receive a

hostile welcome from both white and

black communities. Being neither one

thing nor another may get you on the cover of Vogue, but it isn't an easy way

to make friends.

Scroll down for more...

But this is 2007,

surely things are more enlightened

than that? I hope so, but I fear not.

One reason for my fear is my own

mixed reactions to my daughter. Don't

get me wrong, I love her. She is the

child I didn't think I'd have after my

first marriage broke up. She is the only

granddaughter in our family and we

all dote on her.

But when I turn to the

mirror in my bedroom to admire us together, I am shocked. She seems so

alien. With her long, dark eyelashes

and shiny, dark brown hair, she

doesn't look anything like me.

I know that concentrating on how

my daughter looks is shallow. She is a

person in her own right, not an

accessory to me. But still, I can't

shake off the feeling of unease.

I didn't

realise how much her looking different

would matter and, on a rational level,

I know it shouldn't. But it does.

Evolution demands that we have

children to pass on our genes, hence

the sense of pride and validation we

get when we see our features

reappearing in the next generation.

With my daughter, I don't have that.

Do black fathers who marry white

women and then have paler-skinned

children feel my sense of loss? Or

maybe Chinese mothers or

Middle-Eastern grandparents grieve

when they see a child they know to be their own, but whose features

don't reflect that?

I worry that, as my

daughter doesn't look like me, people

will assume she is adopted.

After all, it's all the rage in showbiz

circles.

Madonna famously scooped

up a black child when she wanted to

be a mother again and Angelina Jolie

appears to be assembling a 'pick 'n'

mix' of kids from different countries.

It's all very United Colours of

Benetton, isn't it?

In the real world, I fear for my

daughter's sense of self. She has a

tiny foot in two cultures. How will she

negotiate a path between the two? I

worry that my sons will feel less of a

kinship with their sister because she

is different, although there is no sign

of that.

As for myself, there is an

inescapable status issue to

address. White women who

have non-white children are

stigmatised as 'Tracy

Towerblocks' living on benefits, most

of which they spend on lager and fags.

Even if I don't fit this profile, my

daughter's difference definitely points

out the fact that my children come

from two different fathers.

If I wanted to pass us off as a nice,

neat nuclear family, she would blow

my cover at once.

But it is more than that. I am

frightened, frightened of others'

reactions to her, as well as my own. I

didn't think of myself as racist and yet

my daughter has shown me a side of

myself about which I feel deeply

uncomfortable.

Even admitting to

having mixed feelings about her not

being blonde and blue eyed, I feel

disloyal and incredibly guilty.

I know the obvious comment is that

I must have known how a child of our

union would look when I married an

Indian man, but it is a wise woman

who thinks that far ahead when she

falls in love.

I didn't think about any of

this before I got pregnant. I wanted to

have a baby. Her colour and culture

were immaterial then.

But self-flagellation is not useful. I

have more pressing concerns. I am

now the mother of a 'black' child,

even if she is more the hue of weak

tea than espresso.

This is a role for

which I am utterly unprepared. Part

of me thinks I should be playing sitar

music to her in her cot, mastering

pakoras and serving them dressed in

a sari, but that would be fantastically

fake coming from me.

When she was born, pale but with

lots of dark hair, I asked the midwife

if her eyes would stay blue. 'Asian

genes are very strong,' she said in

what I took to be an ominous tone.

No more Brady Bunch kids for me.

The midwife has been proved right

and every day my baby's eyes get a

little darker.

Even so, when she looks

up at me as I feed her, my heart melts.

My love may not be colour blind, but

hers is, and that is truly humbling.