VANCOUVER ISLAND BRANDED RACIST

Message to the World About Vancouver Island 

(According to Kevin Laird)

Vancouver Island has a brand.

It’s the postcard: ocean, forests, laid-back towns, “welcome” signs, smiling servers, friendly neighbours, a place you escape to — not a place you brace yourself for.

Now along comes Kevin Laird with a headline-sized message that, whether he intended it or not, reads like this to outsiders:

“If you’re not white, Vancouver Island is not for you.”

That’s not me endorsing the idea. That’s me translating the impression created by sweeping language like “racism on Vancouver Island is real — and persistent,” plus the kicker lines in the piece: “Racism is not hidden… It is routine” and “These patterns are deliberate.”

Those are not small claims. Those are reputational claims. And reputational claims travel.

“Racism exists here” is not controversial

Let’s start with the obvious: yes — racist harassment happens here. It happens everywhere. The Cowichan example he cites (reported anti-Indigenous harassment, people being shouted at, targeted in stores, abused online) matters. The Sooke mayor example matters too. Anyone honest knows comment sections can be cesspools.

Condemn it. Confront it. Deal with it.

But here’s the problem: the column doesn’t just condemn incidents. It brands a place.

“Routine” and “persistent” need evidence, not vibes

When you write “routine” and “persistent,” you’re not describing a single ugly incident or even a bad month. You’re claiming an ongoing pattern across an entire region.

Where’s the proof?

No counts. No timelines. No comparisons. No “here’s what’s changed over five years.” No distinction between “a handful of repeat offenders online” versus “widespread behaviour in daily life.”

Instead, the piece leans on a broad, rolling “people report… residents describe… communities are judged…” and then jumps to “deliberate.” That’s the leap.

Calling something “deliberate” implies intention — not just random jerks, not just social friction, but a pattern with purpose. That’s a serious accusation to level at a whole region while providing zero hard grounding.

Outsiders won’t read it as a local call-to-action

Inside the Island bubble, maybe some readers take it as: “Stop pretending this doesn’t happen.”

But outside the bubble, it reads as: “This place is hostile.”

And that matters.

Because the people who pay the price for that broad-brush reputation aren’t editorial writers. It’s local businesses, local tourism, local workers, local families — and ironically, it’s also the very minority residents the piece claims to defend, because nothing says “belonging” like your own home being portrayed as a persistently racist zone.

The “who” problem: it quietly frames this as “white people doing racism”

Now to another point: does Laird explicitly say “white people are the ones saying these things”?

No — he doesn’t name perpetrators by race. He names “racialized residents” as recipients, and he names institutions (schools, employers, councils) as places where it shows up. But the “doer” is left mostly faceless: the shouty person, the online commenter, the coded-language speaker.

In a region that is majority white, leaving the “who” undefined strongly nudges readers toward one default image: white Islanders as the offenders and “racialized residents” as the harmed.

That may fit a certain narrative, but it’s also a simplifying frame — and it’s not intellectually honest to pretend prejudice only runs one direction.

Racism and ethnocentrism can show up in any group. Power dynamics matter, yes. History matters, yes. But if the goal is a cleaner, safer civic culture, you don’t get there by implying virtue comes in one skin colour and vice in another.

You get there by naming behaviours precisely and dealing with them consistently — whoever does them.

The real issue: sloppy rhetoric makes real solutions harder

If you want change, you need clarity:

• What exactly is happening? (Incidents? Where? How often?)

• What’s new? (A trend line, not a mood.)

• What systems are failing? (Reporting? Enforcement? Workplace policy?)

• What’s the remedy? (Consequences, standards, training, better reporting, better policing of actual threats — not just press releases.)

Instead, the piece offers a familiar cycle critique (“statements issued, committees meet, attention moves on”) — fair — but then doubles down on branding the entire region as lacking resolve and not as welcoming as it claims.

That’s not analysis. That’s a slogan.

Here’s a better message to the world

If we’re going to send a message, let it be this:

Vancouver Island is not uniquely wicked and it’s not uniquely virtuous. It’s a real place with real people — and like anywhere, it has its share of decent neighbours and a few loud idiots. Racist harassment is real. But calling it “routine” and “persistent” across the Island without evidence doesn’t fight racism — it fuels division, feeds cynicism, and smears people who’ve never harmed anyone.

Confront the problem. Don’t libel the whole place.

Because if we’re going to “face the facts,” then here’s one more fact:

A headline that paints an entire region as persistently racist is not just commentary — it’s a reputational weapon. And once you swing it, you don’t get to act surprised when the world reads it literally.