The new face of Ireland

The faces are of men and women, young and old, rural and urban. They are "typical" Irish faces chosen to front the advertising campaign for shares in Telecom Eireann. You might not bat an eyelid. Each face is white. Another ad runs, for an Irish cheese. It extols the apparent beauty and purity of Ireland, an "island . . . out here on the edge of Europe . . . all on our own".

Up to recently such ads would give few people pause for thought. After all, it could be argued that the Republic of Ireland was almost entirely white, English-speaking and Catholic. We have been out here, on the edge of Europe, "all on our own". But in the past two years our society has seen unprecedented changes. Rapid economic growth has given us a net inward migration of 42,000 people. The number seeking asylum here has climbed from 1,179 to 4,626. The State training agency, FAS, has been forced to host recruitment seminars across Europe. Restaurants throughout the country are staffed by folk conversing in continental languages.

How cosmopolitan, people say. But what about the ugly underbelly? The media frenzy on "refugees ripping off the State"; the verbal and physical attacks on blacks; surveys showing 89 per cent of non-white students have experienced racism; and the hate mail to Dublin's Lord Mayor, after he launched a campaign to integrate immigrants. Suddenly, staring multi-culturalism in the face, we wonder if we can cope.

According to Dr Ronit Lentin, co-ordinator of the Ethnic and Racial Studies programme at Trinity College, Dublin, it's not such a new scenario. Ours has always been a multi-cultural society, she says, and one which she believes, has always been subtly racist too. "All sorts of people have always been here. We have never talked about them as a `problem' because they have been invisible."

Sure, we know a lot about Chinese and Indian food, but, she asks, how many of us know anything about - much less anyone from - the 2,000-strong Chinese community, the 1,000-plus Indians, the 100 Pakistanis, the 200 Russians or the 3,200 Italians living among us? "They have kept their heads down," she says, "as a survival mechanism." The Jewish community, she says, has simply left. Its Dublin numbers have fallen from more than 3,000 in 1961 to about 1,000 today. It has taken the recent arrival of asylum-seekers in larger numbers to highlight concern about our minorities and their position in Irish society.

Shalini Sinha is a Canadian of Indian extraction who came to live here two years ago. "When I first came I was told, as a friendly word of warning, that I would always be an outsider, even if I stayed for 30 years. I found myself looking around for a place I belonged. What came back to me was that there was no recognition of who I was. I felt isolated and excluded." Currently writing a Phd on gender and racism in Ireland at UCD, she has given the issue considerable thought.

"I think in Ireland there is the feeling there's an Irish `people'; that to be Irish is an exclusive thing, almost biological. A right to an Irish identity is handed down," she says. "To be truly Irish you have to know the history, the Irish games and the culture. You cannot `become' Irish in the way you can British or American."

Lentin agrees, saying that the aspects we pride ourselves on - friendliness, the culture of helping each other, the selfless welcome, the familiarity - is predicated on a fundamentally xenophobic world view. Inclusivness, she believes, is necessarily exclusive - based as it is on keeping otherness out.

Amel Omran, a Muslim student from Sudan, says individual Irish people have been "very welcoming". When she arrived three years ago she felt she "was in the right place". However, today she feels she can no longer live here. She says it was here she first realised she was "black" and that the Irish make judgments about her based on what they see.

"They see my veil and assume I am an `oppressed Muslim woman'. They think I don't speak and so don't come up and talk to me at functions. I always have to start conversations. People ask me why I wear the veil when my family is not here - assuming I wouldn't choose to wear it myself," she says. "If I was thinking of staying I'd think `Do I really want this for the rest of my life?' " The Irish assume they are not racist, says Dr Robbie McVeigh, author of The Racialisation of Irishness. Clearly, however, we are "racialised", in the sense of being conscious of ourselves as a race. This he attributes to the Irish experience of racism abroad. He points to our colonial history which directed energies towards defining ourselves as a "nation apart".

"The mobilisation of the Irish as a race, for political purposes in America and Britain has spilled over here," he says. He also points to the church, and the way it has encouraged generations of Irish people to view black people as victims. We send money for the black babies, but how many would we take into our homes?

Racism, he continues, "is about power". "What we're looking at is the way Irishness and whiteness empowers." In the current context, the "Fortress Europe" mentality of the EU empowers the Irish State to exclude non-whites, he says.

Dr Lentin believes there must be a reformulation of "Irishness" if we are to successfully confront the inevitability of multiculturalism, and ideally, move towards interculturalism . . . "where no culture is dominant, and the concept of Irishness is extended to encompass being Jewish or Muslim or black or whatever". In multiculturalism these are merely tolerated, she says. This will require an intellectual rather than an emotional response, which gets beyond pity. "I think there are moves in the right direction," says Lentin, She welcomes a programme for anti-racism training announced last month by the Garda, and moves by health boards to look at the medical needs of different cultures.

Referring to the recent bomb attacks in London by a lone racist, she says it does not take an organised National Front to shatter an ethnic minority's confidence. "All that's needed to inspire such lone attacks is a climate of intolerance."