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If anyone is wanting an objective lesson in how to trash a reputation as a progressive advocate for change then they’d do well to head over to Beyond Robson where Sean Orr is putting on a class. Since starting BR has morphed from a site where people who were cooler than you talked about bands that you weren’t cool enough to have heard of to a strong voice in support of the homeless in Vancouver and the Downtown East Side Community as a whole. It’s always so easy to just ignore the problem, but having Sean Orr bang on about it nearly every day makes that harder to do and that’s a good thing.

Of course the quick and easy way to completely trash that reputation is with casual racism. While bemoaning the death of indie publication Tooth and Dagger, Sean started on a rant about all that was wrong and un-cool about Vancouver. Chief among what makes Vancouver an un-cool place to live was ESL students. Take that in for a moment, the second thing listed in a anti-Vancouver rant is people who do not speak English. Not our idiot mayor, who didn’t even make the list, but people for whom English is a second language.

It seems like a throw away line, the sort of thing that someone might say to their friends at a party and get a few laughs and then try out in front of people who aren’t drinking and get met with blank stares. It’s the sort of thing that’s typically followed by an apology, or a clarification, a “You know what I really meant was…” Maybe he had been watching the Spike Lee penned rant delivered by Edward Norton in 25th Hour [imdb ^[2]] where Norton attacks pretty much every racial group in New York City. There are however things you can get away with saying when you’re Spike Lee that you don’t get to say when you’re not.

The problem was Sean did not follow it up with an apology, or a clarification. When asked in the comments, “You can’t be cool if you’re an ESL student?” he replied, “I don’t know, I don’t think so.” I suppose if he’s trying to find a reason that an indie paper went out of business one could make a strong argument that people who are just learning English probably were not reading it since they don’t read English for the most part. Of course the fact that nobody who does actually read English read it is probably the greater reason for its going under.

Ah but can Sean dig himself deeper? Why yes he can. Seemingly shocked that people were still disagreeing with him that claiming that non-native English speakers were one of the reasons that Vancouver was un-cool he went on to say, “But for the sake of argument, please tell me how ESL students are in any way cool? I’m not talking about immigrants, I’m talking about the kids that come here, learn English, then leave, thereby further contributing to the transient nature of the city.”

Ah, yes the Mel Gibson defense, I only meant that I hate some people based on their national background. Remember Mel Gibson doesn’t hate all Jews, just the ones that control Hollywood, started all of the wars in history and killed Jesus.

The problem is that in the original post Sean was talking about all ESL students, a large percentage of which are residents. Those that are residents are trying to learn English so that they can get good jobs, can better integrate into our society and do some of the things that Sean later accuses them of never doing because “they don’t form underground art scenes and obscure noise bands and put Vancouver on the map as a producer of a internatially (sic) recognizable cultural identity”.

Having known people who have worked in ESL in Vancouver, and around the world, I have to say that Sean’s view of the issue seems to be based on walking past the Asian students who stand outside of the schools downtown during their lunch break. However to suggest that ESL students are just Asian, is completely wrong. To suggest that they’re just students who fly in for a year to learn English and fly back to their castles in… whatever Asian country everyone owns castles and lives like a king while being un-cool, is completely wrong. Significant percentages of the ESL students in Vancouver are from the middle east, or are from India, Pakistan or any of the other multitude of nationalities whose presences in our city makes this a better place to live.

But what’s even wrong about ESL students who are just here for a few years to study at UBC or SFU? They pay much higher tuition than Canadian students, several times higher, and that extra revenue helps to pay to keep the (still too high) tuition fees of Canadian students lower. For the most part they do keep to themselves at university, but then again when I lived in France I latched onto the English speakers I found for security. And when one of my friends made an effort to get to know the ESL students at our school, we got taken into their ring of friends and discovered great people who were cool.

Remember though at the end of the day it’s all about that traffic, or as Sean sums up in the comments, “Besides, the more you click the more I make.”

The thing is that I don’t think that Sean Orr’s a racist. I haven’t met him in real life, but I just don’t believe that he is. I think he said something comes across as racist, but for whatever reason won’t just apologize and recant that statement. Again not knowing him in real life I’m no judge, but he’s always struck me as a fairly decent person and I’m surprised; not that he said it in the first place, hell I say stupid stuff all the time that I instantly regret, but that he’s sticking to his guns.

Six pre-made witty retorts to for tomorrow’s Morning Brew

6) Jeffery Simpson proves that English must be his second language.
5) I get called a racist, doesn’t anyone understand irony?
4) Who knew Jeffery Simpson could read?
3) Jeffery Simpson isn’t cool. He’s fat and listens to U2, fuck him.
2) Meet my ESL friend Yang Mao.
1) What’s a Metroblogging Vancouver?