When Mia McCarthy is the victim of racism, her mother Margaret is infuriated by people's ignorance. They both talk to Fiona Murdoch

Finding herself pregnant, a 19-year-old student panics. The word "disastrous" keeps going through her mind. She really wants to finish her degree course, her boyfriend will soon be returning to Zimbabwe. And being an unmarried mother does not fit into her plans.

Quickly dismissing the idea of abortion, she turns her thoughts to adoption. A social worker in an adoption agency, however, tells her it will be difficult to place the baby: a mixed-race child is, after all, "second class".

This was the situation Margaret McCarthy found herself in during her first year at University College Dublin in 1978. Afraid to talk to her college friends or to her family in west Cork, she bore the burden alone.

The attitude of the adoption agency helped her make the decision to keep her baby. "It was a dreadful way they looked on my child," she says. "I knew my baby would be quite wonderful."

Choosing to ignore the double stigma of being an unmarried mother of a mixed-race child, she decided she would give her baby the best life possible.

"I had a lot of mixed feelings during the pregnancy," she says. "I felt very oppressed and I spent most of the time alone. I didn't feel positive until the baby was born."

Keeping baby Mia was the best decision McCarthy ever made, she says. The two formed a close family unit and, over the years, they have lived in Dublin and Connemara as well as spending brief spells in South Africa and Holland. They are now settled in Chapelizod in Dublin and McCarthy says her daughter is "great company".

Now an intelligent and beautiful young woman, 23-year-old Mia has a journalism diploma under her belt. A regular contributor to the multi-cultural newspaper, Metro Eireann, she is currently in her final year of a media studies degree course. She hopes to move to London in September to enrol in a master's degree course in crime, deviancy and punishment.

Bringing up Mia did not turn out to be as tough as McCarthy had feared. Having successfully completed her social studies degree, her biggest challenge was to secure employment with each move.

Mia's colour was never an issue during her childhood. Her initial years of schooling were spent at the multi-denominational North Dublin Project National School - "a great place where the ethos was to respect everybody".

Neither was her colour an issue at secondary school in Connemara or in Dublin when she returned with her mum at the age of 16: "She was always popular and had a lot of friends."

It was not until she reached adulthood that racism reared its ugly head. "I was never teased or bullied at school and, as a child, I didn't think about my colour," says Mia.

"It is only in recent years that people have sometimes shouted racist comments at me. I think the amount of immigration has given them an excuse to vent their racism."

Mia considers herself to be Irish through and through. Although her mum brought her to visit her father, Emmanuel, in Zimbabwe when she was three, she has no memory of the visit. She is in regular telephone contact with him, though, and he occasionally visits her. He came to her 21st birthday party two years ago. His most recent visit was last October when he came to Dublin for the launch of a book compiled by Margaret.

My Eyes Only Look Out chronicles the stories of a dozen Irish people of mixed-race. "Their experience of life is different in some ways and I felt it was important to hear their voices first-hand," says McCarthy, who is frequently appalled by people's racist comments.

"If something happens to Mia as the result of racism, my immediate reaction is one of rage, even though I know the comments are probably made in ignorance," she says.

"It is a pity to focus too much on colour because you miss out on so much - you don't see the real person. I really hope people in Ireland will get to the stage where they can relate to the individual before a person's colour."

• My Eyes Only Look Out by Margaret McCarthy is published by Brandon Books.