The future�s bright for mixed-race Britons, but some people are still stuck in the past. By Anvar Khan

IF you are half-Japanese you are Haafu; if you are African Indian you are Dougla; if you are half Samoan you are Afatasi. All round the globe a fat and happy glossary of terms for multiracial persons is emerging; but those of us of mixed race are suffocating in this fleshy, welcoming, rainbow-coloured group hug. Of course, such affection and attention is well overdue. While other countries - and even continents - are respectfully trying to describe their racial mix, Scotland is not evolving in this area: Paki is still pretty much the umbrella term.

Both black and white have a sense of their own history but there is no real trace of the mixed-race peoples of this racially polarised world. The past has not honoured us. There is no Martin Luther King Jr for mixed breeds, but there is Jimi Hendrix. What we have in terms of beginnings dovetails somewhere between slavery and immigration, but old-fashioned terms like Eurasian, mulatto, Half-Chat and Mud blood now seem outdated. We started out as "children of the plantation", of course, those embarrassing reminders of forced sex who were excommunicated as half-caste (meaning half-cooked, like sloppy clay in a broken oven). In the overwhelmingly white Britain of the 1960s we emerged as the triumphant result of sexual indiscretion and supposed racial deviancy.

Now mixed-race people are the fastest growing minority in America and the UK; our previous form forgiven like a bad-mannered moment at the dinner table of a wealthy patron, kindly forgotten now that we have status.

I believe that the treatment of mixed-race people by society mirrors the state of race relations. We are the most visible sign of racial harmony you can get. If we are acknowledged then there is a racial truce of sorts. We were ignored until the 2001 Census swept a searchlight over the cities and gave us a few boxes to tick. Now we may finally have our say.

And I have quite a lot to say on behalf of my tribe, which is why I have written a six-part series for BBC Radio Scotland called The Truth Is Never Black Or White. When it comes to debate on race issues, black, Asian and white have jealously guarded their right to speak about colour. The multiracial minority has been robbed of a voice for too long. Blacks and Asians are politicised. Mixed-race people are not - yet. We haven't shown our hand. We remain mysterious, a doodle in the margins.

The persistent stereotype of the mixed race person is someone who is "caught between two cultures"; a tragic mongrel doomed to suffer repeated rejection by two sides which are unable to overcome their own racism; a lonely outsider, a schizophrenic who suffers extreme self-hatred; a racial and cultural casualty. Naff off, please.

There is the theory that a person who comes from a mixture of races is genetically superior; that they get "the best of both worlds" as it is so often touchingly put. Naff off all of you again. We have to move on from perceiving mixed people as social and sexual experiments. The pace of racial integration defies such simplistic judgements.

Little research is available - we have barely been introduced after all - but it is assumed that those of mixed race swither, hither and thither, between their parents' cultures. This intense, meandering adventure can last your entire life. You can wake up one morning suddenly excited about your heritage, as one of those who took part in my documentary did. Richard Ng, 38, was tired of feeling dishonest. Fed up of pretending to be fully Western in order to fit in, he began exploring his Chinese roots.

Those of mixed race suffer from racial envy; we covet the certainty of identity of those who say: "I'm black and I'm proud." We have reservations about anyone who says, "I'm proud to be white", because, in contrast to the empowering slogan of blacks, white people only say that when they are racist.

Patriotism is a difficult area. You are supposed to feel passionate about where you are born. Mixed-race people have doubts about their entitlement. We are stubborn. Few of us treacherously decide we are just one thing.

And so a mixed-race person must be racially diplomatic in order to survive, and this is learned within the home. I am half-white Scottish and half-Pakistani. My parents decided I would be brought up as a strict Muslim. I had only white friends and had to explain I couldn't go out at the weekends. At home I tried to tell my mother and father that, as I was half-white Glaswegian, I should be considered Scottish. I was put in the position of negotiating my own freedom - the freedom to be myself.

Women in mixed-race partnerships often subsume their own racial and cultural identity for no bigger a reason than to keep the peace, so my mother was not an ally. Relatives staked their cultural claim without conscience; one white uncle offered me a pork sausage roll and an Asian uncle phoned from Islamabad to offer me a husband. I said no to the butty and the booty. I was never a pleaser.

There is no perfection, no such thing as a virginity of racial experience. Yet still people insist that there is such a thing as being properly black or Asian. Gallingly it is under this dumb, bovine will, this imaginary sense of racial propriety that a mixed-race kid has to manage to sustain some individual integrity. This is why the term multiculturalism is a bloated corpse.

Yet it is the beloved soundbite of the "race industry", of those who make it their absolute business to advise the arts and media on what is racist and what isn't. Of course politicians and community leaders agree that "we live in a multicultural society". Everyone pays the term lip-service, but no-one knows what it means. If we live in a multiracial society, say so. If we have many cultures practising within this society, be correct. The term "multiculturalism" is just a lazy adjective becoming more barren by the year.

If men and women of a different colour are deciding to set up a home and life together then race is old hat. If ethnic minorities have decided to be less loyal to their parents' culture then barriers fall. There is both racial and cultural integration.

Multiculturalism is a po-faced and patronising term indicating a reluctant tolerance of Britain's racial mix. It suggests we are a messy and complicated society at odds with each other. Clearly this is not true. And if we must be labelled according to our religion and our colour then multiculturalism is rather disrespectful of the mixed race identity because it values those who have a straightforward ancestry.

They say it means nothing now but the term to use is "British". Integration is the tell-tale sign that there is such a thing as shared cultural experience. Mixed-race relationships formed now between second or third generation immigrants will succeed because both partners are not culturally incompatible.

One of the people I spoke to for the series, Zenab Eve Ahmed, 40, is half-English and half-Pakistani. She had to deal with an Islamic father who disowned her because when she left home she decided that culturally she felt more white than Asian.

IT's not what you are racially that counts. Joy Carter, 36, a black Nigerian adopted by a white couple, classes herself "white British". Her boyfriends are white. There is no culture clash. As well as multiculturalism, there is another dodgy perception designed to protect and serve the ethnic minorities that can do just the opposite. Political correctness has achieved nothing. The jury's still out on whether shouting "nigger" means you are racist or plain stupid. Furthermore, foster and adoption agencies still hungover from the pro-segregation philosophies of the black power movement of the 1960s, still do not want to place black kids with white parents and vice versa. Apparently a white parent can't "understand" the black racial experience. Tell that to Carter.

No-one is more disgusting to mixed-race people than the individual who thinks they can decide where we "belong", who thinks they have the right to appropriate our mixed experience and put a minstrel's black face on it. Discrimination against the mixing of races continues and, like racism, it is the result of the racial arrogance of a few. Such policies steal life-changing opportunities from black, white and mixed race children.

Only those of mixed race can challenge these policies. Anyone else is called racist. This prejudice never makes any sense when you are the livid product of interracial love. Like many mixed race kids I too constructed my own fairy tale. I was told so many times that I was "exotic" and "unique". I figured God wanted everyone to mix.

Now I see society rolling towards a luxuriously shallow conclusion. The current "look" in global fashion and advertising is multiracial. My colour is no longer political dynamite, my militant attitude no longer a grenade thrown in the face of my well-wishing, pure white or sheer brown relatives. We are now the zeitgeist, thanks to people like Alex Kapranos, KT Tunstall, Jennifer Tilly, Shirley Bassey and Ben Kingsley.

Meanwhile, Nazma Islam, 16, from Dundee, who is half Bengali, is sick of being called a Paki and asks if it will "get better". It will. Ready or not, Scotland, Britain, the world the future is various shades of brown.

The Truth Is Never Black Or White begins on Radio Scotland on Wednesday at 11.05am