There's an emergency alert on the radio. You've got 15 minutes to grab what you can and leave your home. You don't know how long you'll be gone and you don't know if your home will still be standing when you come back. Write a list of five things you will take.
A common exercise in anti-racism and refugee-awareness training, this is designed to put you in the shoes of a refugee who is suddenly forced to flee. In a training session for teachers, run by Trocaire, many participants chose jewellery, bank cards, food, water and warm clothes. Hardly anyone thought of essential documents such as a birth certificate, passport or academic and vocational certificates. Of those who chose family photos, it was for sentimental reasons rather than for purposes of identification, should the family become separated.
Does an understanding of what refugees might have gone through before arriving in Ireland reduce racism? No, says a commissioner on the Commission for Racial Equality in Northern Ireland and anti-racism trainer, Fee Ching Leong. "This only increases compassion towards them. It's not enough to appeal to the emotions. Compassion is an emotional response, and emotions don't last. Anti-racism needs to be intellectual."
Leong, who left Malaysia 23 years ago to study chemistry at Queens University, Belfast, became involved in race relations work in 1986 when she began teaching English to Belfast's Hong Kong Chinese community.
The majority of Northern Ireland's ethnic minority population is Chinese (a disputed figure of either 4,000 or 7,000). In addition, there are 1,200 travellers, 1,000 people from India or Pakistan, and a further 1,250 from other countries, including about 20 asylum-seekers.
In 1992, Leong became the co-ordinator of Belfast's Multicultural Resource Centre and was influential in establishing links between the RUC and ethnic minority communities.
"The first time the RUC acknowledged there were more than two communities living in the North was in 1992," says Leong. "We had the first multicultural and arts festival and involved the RUC community affairs branch. They wanted to make contact with ethnic minorities. By the 1994 festival, the RUC band was offering to play."
Leong is convinced education can reduce racism - but it takes time and involves questioning assumptions, prejudices and stereotypes. She has trained members of the RUC, in preparation for pilot programmes monitoring racial abuse: "I was frightened at first, because we have our stereotypes about the police. There's a need for better community relations, and both parties need to learn, not just dismiss the other.
"There's still so much institutional racism within the police. The canteen culture of racist and sexist jokes is so much a part of their culture that they don't even see it. They don't see that how they operate excludes certain groups."
What do anti-racism trainers actually do? In a manual written by Leong and Dean Huggins, the section on white privilege asks participants to examine the impact and power associated with being white in Ireland and includes questions such as: What do you like/not like about being white? What do you like/not like about white people?
Another training favourite is role play aimed at developing strategies for dealing with racist statements encountered in daily life. "Some of my best friends are black/refugees/asylum-seekers," or "I'm not racist but I wouldn't marry a black person," says the person playing the role of "racist". The "non-racist" must attempt to successfully challenge such statements. The key, says Leong, is not to enter into an argument with a racist person, but to keep putting the question about why he or she believes those statements.
Since the introduction of the Race Relations (Northern Ireland) Order last year, organisations such as the RUC and health boards have become keen to incorporate racial equality into all their activities. Identifying a growing need for anti-racism training and monitoring, Leong has set up a consultancy specialising in race relations. In the Republic, she says, there is little interest from statutory bodies, with anti-racism training confined to voluntary agencies. Garda recruits, however, do receive training on race relations - although the only minority group directly involved is the travelling community. In the south, the "r word" is just starting to be acknowledged, says Philip Watt, co-ordinator of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism, which was established by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform to continue the work begun last year as part of the European Year Against Racism.
"There are invisible signs of racism," explains Watt. "Where groups are not included, they are in effect excluded. We're looking at how anti-racism can be inserted into government policy. Government departments have to `racism-proof' their policies." Although the committee has proposed anti-racism training for civil service staff, its main aim is to change policy, to make racism illegal. "You may convince people through education strategies," says Watt, "but the best way is through the government setting the lead with policy."
The new Employment Equality Act makes discrimination on the grounds of race illegal, but until the Equal Status Bill is passed, Ireland will remain the only European country not to have ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racism.
Attitudes, however, are slowly beginning to change. At a recent anti-racism workshop in Dublin, one woman confessed she had rung up a radio chat show two years earlier, to "give out" about refugees. After a day looking at the reality of life for refugees and asylum-seekers, she decided to ring again - to give out about racism.
Fee Ching Leong, Omi Consultancy, tel: 0801 232 702266; email, feel@easynet.co.uk
