Heh, that reminds me of a receptionist at the school I worked for long ago. There was a photo in the paper of an Olympic wrestling match between a white Russian guy and a black American guy. When someone mentioned that the American (amerika-jin) had won the match, she pointed at the white guy and asked “him?” When we said it was the other one, she got this confused look on her face, “but… he’s black(koku-jin).”
“Yes, and he’s American.”
“But… he’s black.”
For her, every person had a category, and black was a distinct category on the same level as American or Japanese. The idea that someone could occupy two categories by being amerika-jinandkoku-jin just didn’t compute. I didn’t press the matter by pointing out that I was amerika-jin and haku-jin (white), as I was afraid she’d get a nosebleed.
She was an exceptional case (nice kid, just really dim. She was also amazed that I could play Minesweeper by figuring out where the mines were rather than clicking randomly), but in many cases her exception was just one of degree.
It’s rather amazing that people can still use such old and rigid boundaries to define contemporary identities. Why can’t people understand that it’s not an “Oriental” (which is a derogatory name btw, so Dopers, please don’t use this as a racial class) vs. “Caucasian” world anymore? Asians can be born and raised in America which makes them American, no matter how slanted their eyes are, no matter how straight their hair or olive that their skin is.
Unfortunately, these facial features will always cause people to deem them as an “other”, not an American, European, etc. Asians are forever thought as foreign. If you’re Asian and you’re in the U.S. you must be a visitor who will eventually go back to your homeland.
So as an Asian American man, Windwalker, you didn’t fit into the stereotypes and classifications that were assigned to you before you even got to the interview. It sucks and it’s unfair, but it happens. At least you weren’t hired so that you didn’t have to go through all the staring and backtalking that you would have experienced in China.
Fuck them. You have the degree, you have the experience. Get yourself a better job and rise above this bullshit. Make yourself better because there will always be stupid and petty people out there who want nothing but to judge you and force you into their narrow view of what you should be.
As another person with a “yellow face” know that you’re not alone in the struggle to show that you’re American and oh my god, Asian.
Jesus, that’s absolutely brutal if true. Why can’t these places just advertise that they’re looking for a model/teacher, with the model part requiring non-black hair and non-black eyes?
It’s actually a violation of the South Korean constitution to discriminate on the basis of race. That means the places that do so advertise can be forced to pay a hefty fine if the prosecutor desires to pursue the case. Now, there are places that advertise that they prefer people of a certain persuasion. That is also illegal and opens them up to prosecution or even to revokation of their license by the Board of Education.
There’s no such thing in the employment categories as “model/teacher.” One may be a model or one may be a teacher. One cannot be both and obtain an employment visa here. Just this month, approximately 37 foreign English teachers put on a public performance for other foreigners. The ones putting on the performance have been arrested and some of them have already been ordered to leave the country.
One of the quirks of the legal system/administrative law system here is that the complainant must be in the country to pursue the case. It’s permitted but extremely rare for the Labor Board inspector to grant a complainant’s request to have another person appear on his behalf. And appear is all that he can do.
Another one that turns up from time to time some American-born guy with two Korean-born parents. He goes to his cousin’s wedding in the Old Country and gets arrested for not doing national service.
Last year, the nationality law in South Korea was changed to prohibit relinquishing S. Korean citizenship until after the national service is completed. The national service law was also changed to permit mixed-race S. Korean citizens, providing that the mix is Korean and other Asian, to serve in the military if they so desire. The new law does not require them to serve as it does for 100% Korean race citizens.
I’ve had a few Stealth Gaijin friends and acquaintances here who are of asian ancestry but who are culturally American or Canadian. A couple of them have been in situations where someone yells at them for doing or saying something wrong. They’re held to a different standard of behavior because they look Japanese or something.
I found it kind of amusing and annoying when I went out for ramen with a Chinese-Canadian girl. She’d only been in Japan for about 6-8 months or so, I’d been here for a little over 3 years. They kept looking at her when they spoke, despite the fact that she spoke almost no Japanese and kept needing me to translate. She said that she got chewed out by some old lady once for, she thought, not bowing right. A Korean-American girl who left last year told me that she got dirty looks all the time, especially from men. She was told she was “too tall” (about 160 cm) and “too forward” (duh, culturally American, guys). Personally, I wanted to nail her; she was hot. But she said everyone treated her like she was ugly or something.
There are people of Korean ancestry in Japan who are required to register as foreigners even when they’re 3rd or 4th generation decedents. Odd how cultures that are as different as China and Japan do have very similar ways of ostracizing people.
To the OP: Are you me? Because that is exactly what I had to deal with when trying to get an ESL job back home in Korea. People wouldn’t hire me (either that or I’d get paid lower wages) because I looked Korean and I spoke Korean fluently. Their reasoning was that if my Korean was that good, my English couldn’t possibly be up to par. For some reason they couldn’t wrap their heads around the concept of being equally fluent in both languages. I mean, wouldn’t it be BETTER for them if their teachers were bilingual? I can’t count how many times I’ve had to act as an interpreter for the admin (who usually can’t speak a word of English) and the other teachers (usually foreign) - if anything, people like me should get paid more, not less, since we end up getting double the workload. Argh.
Thank you for reminding me why I left Korea. I don’t feel as homesick anymore.
They’re required to register as foreigners because they’re not Japanese citizens. Until they get naturalized, they’re citizens of either North Korea or South Korea. After the two competing Korean governments were established, Japan required all Koreans resident in Japan to select either the Northern or Southern regime for their citizenship.
Why aren’t those who are born in Japan citizens of Japan? It’s pretty simple, really. (As late as February 1996) The Japanese citizenship law provided only that citizenship derives from parentage, not place of birth. There were a couple of exceptions. One was that if a foreign woman gives birth to a child whose father is Japanese and not married to the woman, the father must claim parentage prior to the child’s birth. Another was that if a child is born on Japanese soil and the citizenship of neither parent is known, then the child is a Japanese citizen from birth. Regarding that last one, there was a big case back in the 1990s involving an abandoned child where the Japanese courts ordered the government to issue the child a Japanese passport.
Yep, that happened to me on a business trip in Ibaraki a while back. I was with a French-Chinese engineer who didn’t speak any Japanese, and the waiters at the restaurant we always went to kept expecting him to order. After a few days they finally caught on, but I wonder if they ever realized he didn’t speak the language, or if they thought he was just a really strict Japanese teacher who was forcing me to do all the talking.
Separate the issues. A language school in china teaching english may be just that - a language school teaching english. There is also a high probability it is a con job designed to separate customers from their money. The former want english teachers and the latter generally want actors to play a part in the “teaching english charade.” heck, many of the students are in on the game, and don’t seem to mind. Now for the latter type ‘entertainment’ school, being a native speaker & qualified teacher is immaterial as long as the minimum bar is met. They want someone that looks the part foremost, and the teaching qualifications are a distant second. This does not necessarily equate with being racist. In fact, the ‘actor as a teacher’ is plausible, common and at least likely in this case.
Now it’s been 20 years since I did the english teaching thing in taiwan, but i’d be pretty surprised if the basic scenario’s have changed any. This has been going on a long time.
Please no lectures on Chinese and racism. I am reasonably versed on the subject.
Windwalker, one thing you are guaranteed to run into that’s probably pretty irritating, is the expectation that because you’re genetically chinese, you are expected to speak fluent chinese. Many chinese in china just can’t comprehend that a second, third or fourth generation chinese american would not speak chinese. Sheesh, a buddy took his adopted chinese son and hs wife (the son’s mother) to the US for only 2 years of high school, and the son had lost his chinese writing skills to the point he could not integrate back into a public shanghai high school.
Take me on the other hand, a white guy can say “ni hao” and be bombarded with complements on how fantastic the chinese is. If an american-chinese next to me speaks anything less that perfect mandarin, they will likely be mercelessly rideculed.
Chinese in china simply have no concept of the american melting pot, and just how fast a kid can become 100% american. It’s outside the credulous realm…but i’m not sure that makes it truly racist. I’d say if one wants to interpret it as racist activity, a case could be made. IMHO, it would be tough to make the case it’s a intentionally racist.
My college required students to pass exams in English and your choice of German or French. Classes were provided for English (starting in my first year, but not previously); for the other two you had to find them yourself. I chose German thinking that, since it is more “alien” to me than French, studying it would bring me greater benefit.
Three years of German classes with native non-teachers who
had no grasp of grammar,
had come to live in Barcelona without even knowing that it’s a bilingual area
of course could not speak a word of Spanish
and methods that focused heavily on the “oh so difficult grammar” (very easy for people who spoke at least two roman languages plus english and who had at least one year of Latin) with almost no work on building vocabulary,
I took the French exam instead and got a 100%
In Philly I made friends with a coworker who was part of our teaching team. Like me, he had a “factory” background rather than a degree in English or Journalism (which the rest of the teaching team had); like me, he looked at the courses and said “am I supposed to get mechanics to understand this?” So we started collaborating, went out for lunch a couple times, traded war stories. At one point he told me “your experiences as a woman in Spain are so similar to my own as a black man in Chicago, I’m not sure if it’s funny or scary!”
I know this is one anecdote, most companies don’t have this kind of environment, but this is one of the problems he’d been having with his previous employer:
everybody above a certain level in the factory belonged to the same country club. This club did not have any rules about the races of its members, of course. But in order to become a member, you had to be invited by two other members. So, you know, they didn’t discriminate, but it’s funny how they didn’t have any jewish, irish, hispanic or black members! As my coworker said “those guys make me feel like calling the jews ‘bro’”.
I know of at least one recruitment company in Spain (which has a very good image but it’s not because they’re good, it’s because their ads on the newspaper are very large and this gives HR people the impression that they’re good) which has never called a female candidate except for administrative assistant positions. I’ve been told that I “can’t be an engineer, you’re a girl!”; I’ve been told I can’t have over 10 years experience because “you’re too young!” and then, when I showed my ID to that person proving that I was 12 years older than they’d guessed (and btw in Spain it’s common to include your DoB in your resume), been told that… my national ID was fake! Sure hon, wanna call the cops? Do it and I’ll report you for ageism right here, a pity stupidity ain’t no felony!
I call it the “cookie cutter mind”. These people paint an image of what people with certasin jobs or from certain groups must look like and if you’re the wrong color, hair length, gender or age - their brains go SCREEEEEECH! Some of them find the disturbance to their pretty pink little world so disturbing that they get angry at you even. Their loss, but yeah, every time I run into one I want to trepane them and see if any braincells are home.
Yeah, I know some joke schools here, but Jill’s is not one of them; it’s mostly test prep and intense general oral practice for those who need to get a certain score on an exam, or who are going abroad. The students would most certainly appreciate the best teacher. I don’t even bother applying to joke schools, since they, as you say, are mostly looking for white models.
Yeah, I’ve been here long enough to know this, which is why I don’t expect any kind of understanding from regular folks on the street. If I’m on the way to becoming friends with someone, then I really try to make them understand, but otherwise, I’m not fussed. You need a thick skin to live in China, anyway. But someone in charge of running an actual English-teaching school (of the non-joke variety), who deals with foreigners on a day-to-day basis, and who is responsible for producing results in the form of satisfied customers who stay with the school? I think we should expect a bit more.
Racism is such a loaded term that perhaps it’s not best applied here. But this must surely be the essence of the term ‘racial prejudice’, as there seems to be a rigid clinging to a certain concept of ‘white’, ‘yellow’, ‘black’, etc. to the point that some refuse to accept that anyone of their own race is incapable of being a natural, fluent English-speaker. And the attitudes towards black people in particular are not flattering in the least, which sometimes comes out in the way they are treated; you’d probably find more than a few people willing to call that racism.
A remarkable number of American Muslims come here because they feel out of place in the US. Plus, they get to see the Holy Land.
A large number of them are soon disappointed. I had one tell his students Muslims do not cheat on tests. He then left the room. It did not work out as well as he hoped.
Some, upon discovering Saudis are people like the rest of us, try to convert them to Islam. (“No, put your heels together, arms like this.”) Penis sometimes ensues.
Then there is the whole issue of The N Word. Saudis do not generally realize how explosive this word is. I try to tell everyone, on both sides. They have to find out themselves.
