The number of biracial people in the UK is increasing, but we are still ignored when it comes to debates about race, culture and identity.

All my life, I've wanted to find depictions of people who look like me; I've searched for stories of those with similar life experiences to mine. My search has been fruitless. As a mixed-race woman, my story remains untold and I hit walls of indifference each time I try to raise the issue. I'm a half south-Asian, half white-English woman, and I know no one who can reflect my story back to me. So what, some of you might say. Stop navel-gazing; get over yourself, you may mutter. It's hard to explain to white people, who take their identity for granted, just how lonely it can feel when you've never met anyone else with your particular experience of ethnicity, let alone read about them or seen them on TV or in the movies.

You - the white majority - take your role models for granted. British Asians have their Rich List and people of African Caribbean origin have their 100 Great Black Britons list. I don't begrudge them their pride in their achievements but what do biracial Britons - who are predicted to become the single largest minority group in the country, overtaking those of Indian origin - have that is comparable? We have nothing - because people like me still remain largely unacknowledged, with debates around race, culture and identity excluding mixed-heritage people. It is almost impossible to find biracial people referred to in government departments or research. It seems, because we don't form a multiracial "movement" that our needs are being wilfully ignored by those in charge. Our numbers have still not reached enough of a "critical mass" to matter, as far as British society is concerned.

When I was growing up, the term "mixed race" hadn't been invented - I was regularly described as half-caste instead. There were certainly no mixed-heritage people in the public eye for me to relate to for inspiration, direction and a greater sense of community. Thankfully, as far as I am concerned, there are many more mixed-parentage people around now. In 2001, according to the census, we numbered 674,000. We are projected to be 950,000 by 2010 and 1.24m in 2020. We are the fastest-growing ethnic minority in the UK, and 50% of my minority is aged 16 and under.

But while I welcome the fact that there are more people who look like me populating these isles, it's disturbing to know that mixed-race children have lower levels of attainment at school, have higher rates of exclusion from school, and are said to be 8.5 times more likely to end up in care. Anecdotally, they're said to face peer pressure on the grounds of their mixed heritage from both white and black peers - just as I did in my childhood. As adults, mixed race Britons show the highest rates of lone parenthood and family breakdown and the highest rates of drug treatment. Trevor Phillips has spoken of these being outcomes of identity stripping - children who grow up marooned between communities.

One has to acknowledge that it can be difficult growing up without a fixed identity as black or white. It makes black and white people feel uncomfortable too, because they want to know whose "side" you belong to. Many mixed-race people, in the past, would assign to themselves a black identity. At least then they were part of a large community who had pride in their colour. In the past five years or so, partly due to the US experience, where the mixed-race community is large and politicised, and partly due to the 2001 census, which gave us the opportunity to state who we were, once and for all, there's been a growing sense of biracial Brits wanting to be seen for their authentic selves. We're not black or white but mixed - special and unique.

If biracial adults start to feel proud of being mixed, it follows that mixed kids will gain a greater sense of recognition and higher self-esteem. It's for this reason that I'm putting together a book for kids and young adults on British mixed-race icons. As well as lining up some wonderfully inspiring role models, I'm collating statistics on the mixed population of the UK. But, in turning to the three bodies here dealing with ethnicity, I've drawn a blank. Can they help me put together facts and figures on the history of mixing in the UK, the current position, and its future? I've had answers along the lines of - "oh yes, we do feel we should do something for the mixed race, but we haven't and we don't know where to start, so no, we can't help you."

Society continues to turn a blind eye to us, hoping we'll go away, with our exotic good looks, seeing us all as lost souls caught between two cultures. As long as bureaucrats see us as an anomaly, as at best an add-on to the black community, not only will the reasons for the social disadvantages of being mixed continue to be under-researched and under-resourced, but initiatives like mine, to celebrate the British mixed-race experience, by providing biracial kids with stories of famous role models, will struggle to get off the ground.