Why my Asian mother fancies Elvis

I recently met Sathnam Sanghera, a Cambridge graduate and Times journalist. He'd written of his determination to marry a white woman and I asked why. He sheepishly admitted that a white partner was proof he'd "made it".

VS Naipaul's biography claims his relationships with white women were warped by race anxieties but he's of an older generation. It was odd hearing this neurosis expressed by a successful, British-born thirtysomething.

Raised in a poor Sikh family in the Midlands, Sanghera was insecure about his status. Black and Asian people of our generation conflate race with class: when we were growing up, it seemed colour defined your social position, not your career. Sanghera wants a white spouse to ease his fear that, despite his achievements, he was still just a wog.

But his marital preference is no stranger than the desire for a brown baby expressed by white women I've dated. Mixed-race babies are as much of a trophy for them as white women are for Sanghera.

Race and sex have a complicated relationship. I've been aware of it ever since I was overlooked during playground games of kiss-chase. Even children had a complex about inter-racial pecking then. Now, it seems inter-racial sex tops every hip young woman's list of things to do before she marries.

I don't share Sanghera's angst. I think Asian women are gorgeous. But for all sorts of reasons, including the lack of sexual confidence of Asian women, I've found it easier to get things going with a black or white one.

Like dating someone of a different social background, inter-racial relationships have an allure: both a subversive frisson and a sense of transcending prejudice. The smuggest couples I've known have been mixed-race ones, because they know they're making the world a better place.

Even my very traditional Indian mum isn't immune to inter-racial longings. None of the men she's admitted fancying have been Asian: Elvis Presley, Daley Thompson and Bobby Ewing.

But mixed-race couples do have their dysfunctions. I've noticed a trend among people in mixed-race relationships to cheat with someone of their own colour, wanting to reconnect with a culture they've become estranged from.

Everyone's hang-ups get played out through sex, and in Britain race is part of that process. Sanghera's sense of inadequacy shows how far we are from a colour-blind utopia.