The rise of racism as an issue in Ireland cannot simply be attributed to the recent increase in people of other nationalities coming into this country. So says Canadian-born Shalini Sinha, a graduate of Alberta University and now a postgraduate student at UCD.

In Ireland we're a less homogenous society than we may like to think, she says, pointing to the traveller population and to influxes of people from other countries over the years. "The view that you need a lot of black people for there to be racism is incorrect. The messages are there but until you get a mass of people to confront them they go unnoticed," she says. Sinha recently completed a master's at UCD's Women's Education, Research and Resource Centre and has just embarked on a PhD on gender and racism in Ireland. "My master's research looked at how the lives of women of colour in Ireland are different to the lives of white settled women," she explains. "A big issue for women of colour who were born and raised here is that Irish society won't accept them as being Irish. So they have to fight to claim themselves as being Irish - they have to fight for their right to their Irish identity."

People do learn how to cope with racism, she says. "The bottom line is that you just get on with things. But it does have an impact and shapes your life." It can determine where you live and work and how you react to people.

Social class can also make a difference. "If you're middle class you can live a sheltered, protected life and may not notice it at all. You may not feel there is a huge barrier."

Sinha, whose parents come from India, grew up in Alberta. "It's not a very multicultural area and I was the only black child in my school," she recalls. "I feel that I have a stronger sense of who I am and what is important to me than my white friends in Canada because I had to confront issues at an early stage. "I was growing up with one culture at home and a vastly different one outside. Anything I did was rejected somewhere."

In her research, she found that many women of colour lead extremely isolated lives in Ireland. However, people who were born here may be less aware of this isolation than people who have moved to Ireland from elsewhere. "They can't compare their experiences with anything else, but people moving in can feel immediately that they are in a minority. They see few people of colour on TV. They don't meet people with experiences similar to their own. "A lot of immigrant women have a hard time building close relationships with white Irish people. They may make friends on a superficial level, but rarely anything more than that." Interestingly, although they feel isolated, these women report that they like living in Ireland, she says. Sinha's thesis for her PhD will examine how racism is institutionalised in Ireland. "Racism is not just about individual incidents," she says. "These simply draw our attention to the issue. Racism operates throughout society. I am nailing down experiences of how racism is institutionalised in Irish society in order to inform future policy." Although Irish people have experienced racism, they are often unaware that they too can be racist. There's a sense, she argues, in which people pretend that they are unaffected by the fact that they have been victims of racism. In fact, however, "they are trying to live down an inferiority complex, and a sense of being victimised. People who are on the defensive are still victims and it's easy to turn around and put down someone else."

Racism - and it pervades all societies - becomes institutionalised when the dominant group sets up institutions to meet its own needs but which fail to meet the needs of other groups. "The view that the best way to deal with travellers is to settle them doesn't acknowledge that their way of life is valuable, that travellers travel and that they have a right not to be excluded from social support because they travel," she says.

According to Sinha, the language we use when dealing with difference reveals how comfortable we are with these differences. "Everyday `race' language," she says, "is less about words and more about communicating to others that you have never challenged the conditioning, suspicions, awkwardness or injustices. Everyday racism is about your communicating to me that no one has ever made you aware of your undue privileges in the race order, that you have never exerted yourself against them - or perhaps that you have never really noticed them."

People often want a "quick fix", she says. They want to learn the right words and appropriate actions to use when dealing with people from other cultures. "What is actually being asked is: `Tell me what to say or do to let people know I'm not racist'."

However, by looking for an easy way out, we fail to confront the real issues concerning racism, she says. Words may be used "to send messages of only superficial awareness of racism and intent to challenge it. While we can try to manipulate our verbal language to serve this end, our non-verbal language - our awkwardness, discomfort, embarrassment, staring - will likely give us away."

What we should do, Sinha suggests, is to examine our own use of language and our verbal and non-verbal communications and work to challenge the racist system in ourselves. "Making contact with people, being sincere, taking the initiative and challenging ourselves is what will let them know that `we are okay'," she argues.

She also advocates "massive antiracism training at all levels of society - in schools, in the media, the Garda and among policymakers and TDs. It's very important that the training isn't just information sharing, but is awareness building. It is essential that people doing the training are properly trained." . At the end of the day, Sinha chooses to take a positive view of the future in Ireland. "My classes on racism and gender are attracting only people from the majority group. I am very hopeful."

UCD's adult education department offers an evening course, "Racism and gender in Ireland", on Tuesdays from 7.30 to 9.30 p.m. on the Belfield campus.