Stuart Heritage has a lot to answer for. But his main crime is leading me towards the Guardian website. I’m not so far gone that I would stop buying the Daily Telegraph every day. [Heaven forbid I miss out on their crossword.]

I am, however, increasingly reading and agreeing with some of their editorials. It started innocently enough with the X Factor live blog and now I’m reading comment pieces and almost, but not quite nodding my head in agreement.

An article on passive tolerance caught my eye today.

At first glance I thought it might be something to further support my fight to be allowed to smoke freely and joyfully.

But alas no, it looked at studies that have found that living in an area of high diversity rubs off on people and makes them more tolerant to ethnic diversity.

I’m still looking for any supporters to my demands to repeal the ban on smoking indoors – but this article struck more of a chord than my pointless one-woman crusade.

There’s been some coverage of the racist attacks occurring in Northern Ireland, with a few sound bites from elected representatives and editors to condemn it – but these seem to me to be futile attempts that neither address the causes or actively do something to stop the attacks.

I don’t have the answers to what makes someone attack an eastern European family in Rathcoole or daub racist graffiti on the homes of black families in Belfast – but what I do know is that it’s happening and we need more than platitudes.

Statistics show that in 2012, 42% of all racially motivated offences recorded, related to Belfast.

In the same way that we need more than platitudes to address the 32% of homophobic offences and 40% of sectarian offences that took place in Belfast alone in 2012.

Gerard Stewart wrote an “Assessment of Racial Violence in Northern Ireland” which broke down some of the racist attacks and convictions in the last six months of 2013. It makes for pretty depressing reading – whatever colour you are.

“According to the most recent statistics produced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), there are two racist incidents reported, and more than one incident recorded as a racist hate crime in the north of Ireland every day. In the last year, there were a total of 750 racist incidents and 470 hate crimes reported to the PSNI – an increase when compared to the 2011/12 period, as documented by the 2013 Northern Ireland Peace and Monitoring Report.

“The PSNI has argued that the dramatic increase in racially aggravated crimes represents an increased willingness to report them – which while welcome doesn’t change the fact that “the number of race-hate incidents in the Belfast area alone is now higher than it was a decade ago for the entire province of Northern Ireland; with 215 reported incidents of race-hate between April and November 2013 in Belfast compared to 212 reported incidents of race-hate between April and December 2003 in all of Northern Ireland.”

According to Stewart about 80 per cent of racially aggravated crime continues to go unreported.

My experience is, thankfully, very different from those individuals and families who have been directly attacked or even forced to leave their homes. And I am lucky – but there is and always will be a part of me that feels ‘other’, frustrated and at times angry.

The Guardian article gave me a glimmer of hope. It looked at studies undertaken in the US, Europe and South Africa by social psychologists that found that “even prejudiced people showed a greater degree of tolerance over time if they lived in a mixed neighbourhood.”

And in the biggest study to date on diversity and trust in England conducted by the same Oxford team of social psychologists: “White British people were asked whether they felt ethnic minorities threatened their way of life, increased crime levels, or took their jobs; ethnic minority participants were asked the same questions. Both groups were then asked about how they interact with other groups in everyday situations, such as corner shops, and then about how much they trusted people from their own and other ethnic groups in their neighbourhood. What the study found was that distrust does rise in diverse communities, but day to day, direct contact cancels it out.”

You don’t even need to be part of the interaction with the local newsagent, postman or traffic warden – just witnessing it is enough to have a significant impact and generate passive tolerance.

Northern Ireland’s Black and Ethnic Minority community is minute in comparison to England – but we are increasing in numbers. And while at times it seems like there isn’t the public will to really address these issues – maybe just maybe the more ‘different’ faces we see playing, laughing and interacting across our towns and cities the more tolerant our society will become towards us of a darker or indeed lighter hue.

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