Important Note For Black American, Asian, African and Indian Sub-continent native English speaking teachers - "We only want white people"
This is a quote from the manager of a Chinese English school
What's the Go with this?
In China, just like in the rest of the world, many people are racist. For an English teacher recruitment business like ours this poses a challenge. We have been trying for a long time to place native English speaking Black American, Asian, Indian, Pakistani, Nigerian and Black South African English teachers into schools in China - mostly unsuccessfully. Occasionally we do place black female North American. We are usually met with a polite "no thank you" or an outright, This is a problem, particularly as we receive many enquiries from well qualified native English speakers who are not "white", who we know would make good English teachers. Unfortunately tackling this issue from our position is like walking into a brick wall - there is little we can do about it except encourage the employers to be a little more open minded. To avoid embarrassment both to you and ourselves we have put together this page to hopefully help you make sense of it and give some tips on how best to get around the prejudices if you want to teach in China regardless.
How can you change it?
We are not going to change perceptions or values in China, just like Chinese people are not going to change perceptions or values in the West, not quickly anyway. We can steadily influence perceptions, but to fight them is a drain on your energy and you'll only frustrate yourself. Perceptions will change themselves, with time, exposure and education. In most instances, prejudices have been ingrained for hundreds if not thousands of years and are not going to simply disappear overnight. They are not, as some people presume, a result of European colonialisation alone, indeed the histories of most Asian countries is that of conquest, invasion, divide and rule going back thousands of years - the Mongols, the Khmers, The Han, The Javanese, The Burmese, The Brahmans and so on. |
