In which I pit rampant racial prejudice in China

The BBQ Pit
1

So I have a yellow face. Born and raised in the USA, however, English is the only language I can really speak fluently, the only language I’ve ever spoken at home. Yet for the third time here in China, I’ve been denied an English teaching position because I happen to look Chinese.

I was recommended as a teacher by a friend, as she knew that my previous employer was very happy with me. In addition, I had almost 2 years experience, a college degree, and a TEFL certificate. But when I met Jill, the (Chinese) person in charge of hiring, she looked shell-shocked, and a low moan escaped her lips. She stared at my face like I had leprosy, but after about 10 seconds regained her composure and we made small talk for a while before telling me that she’d be happy to give me classes when they opened up. All the while she was examining my face like a detective.

Of course, my friend later told me that Jill was upset with her for not telling her that I “looked like Chinese”, and even asked her “why does he look so Chinese?” My friend tried to explain that America is an immigrant country, and that we have pure native English-speaking Americans of all colors. Jill apparently nodded that “Sure, whatever, anything’s better than a confrontation” nod.

In the end, they gave classes to a Slovenian with decent English but a fairly noticeable accent, no teaching certificate or experience, and no college degree. But hey, he had blonde hair. C’mon.

Many people ask me why, if I’m really an American (pshaw, ya right), I don’t have blonde hair or blue eyes. How can I have black hair and black eyes? How can this be? So, many people don’t believe I’m American (though they may nod to avoid confrontation). Sometimes, if I want to avoid hassle, I tell folks I’m Korean, or from Kyrgystan.

And OK, I can forgive some people for their ignorance, but someone in charge of hiring at a language school? Someone who has experience with dealing with foreigners? Someone who majored in English at university, and who’s watched quite a few foreign films?

Jill understandably also has the pressure of dealing with the students, who she probably thinks won’t accept a yellow teacher. But to cave in to their potential prejudice right off the bat without even giving it a try? It’s doubly stupid since I’ve taught at several places and I’ve had almost no complaints about my race, and those that I have had disappeared pretty quickly (one of the complainers even becoming one of my best students). It’s triply stupid since they replaced me with a random white guy off the street with no teaching creds.

And so, for the third time in 2 years, I’ve actually lost out on a job due to my race. The last time, I actually lost out to an Israeli guy I couldn’t even understand, his accent was so whack. Funny, when I’ve had several people tell me that there is no racism in China, because “there are no black people”. Don’t even get me started on attitudes towards brothers, who I’ve heard described as a group “ugly, dirty, poor, violent, and stupid”. I’ve been with Chinese girls at a bus stop, seeing a black guy, would slowly inch away from him. I’ve talked with someone who, looking for a language partner, said she didn’t want the black one that she met thru an ad once, because he was not ‘appropriate’. Etc.

But hey, I have a decent job; the gig I tried out for was a bit sweeter in terms of class sizes and student’s language level, but I’ll manage.

But these fucked-up racial hang-ups that far too many Chinese have… nigga, please. Dey gotz ta go.

2

Racism in Asia can be more subtle than in the West (sometimes).

But I will play Devil’s advocate here (I agree with your rant, so don’t get me wrong): it is entirely possible that you could pick up a teaching position in China because of your ethnic background and appearance. Racism takes many forms, and whereas one Chinese family might want a real, authentic “gweilo”, another might trust an Asian face more. If you felt you were given the job in those circumstances over a white person with better qualifications, would you take it?

For me, I’m (only slightly) ashamed to say, I would. Shit happens, and you take the rough with the smooth. I’d justify it to myself by saying it balances out. I’d be interested to hear other opinions on this, though.

3

Doubtful, if China is anything like Japan on this. I wrote a long and angry rant about Japanese racial thinking, then counted to ten and deleted it.

I can’t speak for China, but the situation here is that, basically, being “Japanese” is more than looks or heritage (I don’t think anyone even cares about ancestry; once you’re born overseas, you’re foreign). It’s partly a product having grown up in exactly the same environment and schooling as everybody else, with no ethnic groups, nationalities or cultures other than your own to interact with. For the folks who buy into it, people who fit into their mold are one group, and people who don’t fit at all (whites, blacks, non-Japanese asians, “halfs”) are another group. People who fit partway (Japanese-Americans and Japanese who’ve spent several years overseas) are uncomfortable to deal with because they keep catching you off guard, looking and speaking like one group, but thinking like the other. To the people who are bothered by it, they are not Japanese, but not the foreigners they know how to deal with. It’s like the Uncanny Valley in robotics, where robots that are obviously robotic are easy to deal with, but ones that more accurately mimic humans tend to creep people out. I’m cute and lovable because I’m obviously not human, but Windwalker is this freaky pseudo-human thing.

Most jobs are either Japanese-only, or foreigner-only, and there is next to zero overlap between the two. If a company has already decided they need a foreigner for the job, the best you can hope for is that they’re beyond all this nonsense and will just hire who they think is qualified. Instances where they would lean in favor of hiring Japanese-Americans would be very rare.

4

Nothing to add, I just wanted to congratulate both Windwalker and Sublight for some fascinating reading. I’ve read about Asian “racism” before but your posts were both quite illuminating.

5

Japan and Korea have both developed biological science to world class levels, and genetics is as widely understood there as it is in any part of the world. And yet, DNA analysis of Korean and Japanese people done in Japan or Korea don’t show the same nearly identical distribution of alleles that are apparant in studies published elsewhere.

Subtle asian racism, my ass.

Tris

6

Someday buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about Black Muslim Americans trying to teach in Saudi Arabia.

7

Somewhat related anecdote:

Several years ago the younger brother of a friend of mine related his story of applying for an ESL teaching position in Japan (interview was here in the U.S.). He, like the competiting candidate at the interview, is a white American male, but he was a bit stocky (muscular, not fat) and had a shaved head, while the other guy was younger with a very blonde-blue-eyed skater kid, MTV veejay look.

They were both given a few minutes to ad-lib teaching some vocabulary or grammatical concept in front of the interviewer (a Japanese woman). He said it was immediately apparent that the interviewer disliked him on sight, and despite the amount of energy he put into his performance (which, based upon the sample he gave me, was pretty entertaining), she responded only in a scowling monotone.

Not so for MTV d00d, who had no prior teaching experience and stumbled through the teaching example; he was received with smiles and laughter, and afterward offered the job. Apparently just what they were looking for!

Now of course, the story came to me by way of the guy who didn’t get the job, but I believed his depiction of events was probably accurate. The company wanted a particular “look” in their American teachers, and he (although not ugly or disfigured in any way) simply didn’t fit the bill.

8

Tris, given my amateur interest in biology, I’m a little ashamed to admit it, but this went completely over my head. What does allele distribution have to do with racism?

9

Thanks for sharing your stories, guys.

I guess the problem lies on two fronts: 1) The image they want to convey through the appearance of their teachers 2) The stubborn clinging to the idea that ‘race’ determines or has a large impact on your abilities (e.g. yellow folks won’t ever speak English like fluent white folks, and vice versa).

The first pisses me off because it’s a lousy business model; sure, you can attract a bunch of students if all of your teachers are blonde adonises and goddesses, but they sure as hell won’t keep paying for additional semesters if they (or their kids) aren’t learning shit. You can look at pretty people pretty much everywhere, without paying a single RMB. Jill’s school apparently isn’t doing that well; go figure (eat it, bitch! ;)).

The second pisses me off because it’s pretty much a denial of reality, especially for people who pay attention to foreign things, who all should know, for example, that for most white-majority countries in the world, English isn’t the fucking first language! That America itself has a very prominent black Secretary of State (why is this African chick hanging out with Bush all the time?). If you dig deeper, you’d even find out that America’s had a yellow governor (Gary Locke, WA-D), for two terms! How are they so capable of performing in such important positions in a white society, where surely their other-racedness would prevent them from being able to communicate effectively with or understand their constituency?

Sublight, I hear you with the in-between dilemma. A lot of people don’t know how to react to people like me, especially now that I’ve got a fairly proficient grasp of Mandarin but still say things oddly and still react with surprise/annoyance/delight at random cultural things. Still, on an individual level, once the initial shit gets cleared out of the way, it’s pretty much OK. The only difference is that the foreigner-whores that want status from being seen with whities stay away, and that some of the foreigner-shy locals feel slightly less shy around me (both of these bits clearly work in my favor, for once :)).

Vinyl Turnip, that reminds me of a place I worked at in which the boss hired George, a retired Santa-Clause-looking white guy, to be the director of the foreign staff. George had never taught kids before (in a 90% kids school), and managed to get minimal hours teaching, very few responsibilities, and only 2-3 working days a week with a much higher pay than the other foreign staff. The person who did all the work was the ‘assistant’ director Tina, another yellow American, who got paid not much more than a normal teacher’s salary, and who worked a full 5 days a week and dealt with all teacher interaction, staff interaction, scheduling, complaints, etc. Nobody even bothered asking George anything, since he had no clue what was going on; his main duty (I shit you not) was to sit in the main director’s office and look old and white, two VERY important characteristics. He even complained about some of the few things he did have to do, and so got some of them taken off, as long as he would just sit in the office and look old and white.

10

I must also add that a frighteningly large part of me wants to see Barack Obama elected as POTUS in 2008, simply to make many, many Chinese heads explode.

(the other part of me thinks he’d be a good president, and wouldn’t mind seeing him elected, as well)

11

Throw in your support now, and maybe after he wins you can get the job of Ambassador to China. Wouldn’t that be fun!

12

I met a German in Chengdu last year who had average, and heavily accented, English, who was over the moon that he’d just been given a teaching job. “Zey don’t even know I am not native English speaker!”

And on the flipside… When I used to cross the border between HK and China a lot, there was a form that foreigners had to fill in declaring whether or not they had AIDS. Heaven forbid that a Chinese person should have it!

This prejudice, however, extended to anyone at all “oriental” looking: American-born Koreans, Japanese people, Malaysian Chinese, you name it - none of them could have AIDS - they’re Asian! Inconceivable!

13

Actually, America’s had at least 4 API Governors (George R. Ariyoshi, John D. Waihee III, Ben Cayetano, all HI-D, who between them served for 40 years).

14

The father of an ex-boyfriend of mine is a white professor of oriental languages, and speaks Mandarin (plus quite a few other languages) fluently. In Taiwan, he is frequently told, “You have excellent Chinese,” by random taxi drivers, etc. His standard answer is, “So do you.”

15

Windwalker, could you please e-mail me at kleebner at gmail.com, thanks.

16

The exploding! It will be everywhere!

17

I know it’s rude to answer for another poster, but I believe what he was saying is that most outside scientists have seen (via allele distribution) that Japanese and Koreans are genetically very similar and almost certainly closely related, but due to mutual racism, many Japanese and Korean scientists refuse to acknowledge the kinship. So, mysteriously, studies published by (some) Japanese and Korean scientists interpret a much greater genetic gap between the two nationalities than outside scientists believe.

I don’t know whether this discrepancy is due to outright scientific fraud, “massaging” of data, biased interpretation of real data sets, or just selective focus on differences rather than similarities. Actually, I don’t know if this really happens in Japan and Korea at all (I don’t do population genetics). However, I’m pretty sure that’s what Tris is claiming and, given the human capacity for bigotry, I wouldn’t be surprised.

mischievous

18

Windwalker,

One of my classmates at the University of California at Davis told me that I had no business taking a class in Asian-American Women’s Issues because I’m White and thus "cannot understand the Asian woman’s issues. Yeah, right. And he’s not a woman so what was he doing in that class? This brilliantly enlightened classmate, who happend to be Chinese-American and born in America also told me that, as far as he’s concerned, all Asian women who immigrate to America are prostitutes. I refrained from asking him if it was his mother or grandmother who was a whore.

Here in South Korea, there are stories of non-Whites arriving at the airport and then, when their sponsoring employer sees that they’re not White, just drop the welcoming name card and abandon the employee right there at the airport.

Ah, prejudice. What a lovely example of how the human brain functions.

19

Yeah. mischievous pretty much got it. I suppose I somewhat overstated the case, since I don’t know that all such reports conform to existing racial expectations, but a few years ago, someone did point out the unusual discrepancy in data from the national labs in S. Korea, and Japan, when compared to similar studies among Korean and Japanese American citizens. I will see if I can track down the articles I read, but I don’t think they were more than letters to editors.

At the same time, public opinion in Japan was quite vehement in rejections of proposed close genetic realtionships between the two populations. (This would be around 2002, or so.)

Tris

20

Ah, okay, I understand now. Thanks!