Racism In EFL (with Asia Martin)

Do teachers of different races get treated differently? Do schools prefer white teachers? Do students care what color their teacher's skin is? We Discuss with Asia Martin.

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Tracy Yu: Hello everyone, welcome to our podcast.

Ross Thorburn: This week, we're going to talk about racism.

Tracy: Wow, that's a really sensitive topic.

Ross: Have you witnessed much racism when you were a teacher?

Tracy: I don't think I experienced or witnessed a lot, but I definitely heard people talking about racism when I became a manager.

Ross: Me too. I did notice at least when I was a teacher, for example, that a lot of schools I worked in, all the foreign teachers were white. Yeah, I agree with you. It's only since becoming a manager that I heard things.

For example, somewhere I used to work, I asked the person in charge of recruitment, "What are companies' requirements for hiring teachers?" The person said to me, "Teaching experience, not black."

Tracy: Wow.

Ross: Today, we can look at this from two different aspects. One aspect is we'll interview Asia Martin, who used to work at Shenzhen about her experiences on the receiving end of racism.

Tracy: The second part, I'm going to basically interview you, Ross, about your research paper and recently published in IATEFL about racism in teaching recruitment.

Interview with Asia Martin

Ross: Hi, Asia. Thanks a lot for coming over to the podcast. How are you doing?

Asia Martin: I'm doing all right. I'm getting over a cold. I may sound a little nasally.

Tracy: Asia, do you want to introduce yourself?

Asia: My name is Asia Martin. It's been about six or so months since I last left China. I had been there for about two years working as a English teacher at a language center. I was stationed in Guangdong Province, China.

Ross: Do you want to start off by telling us before you came to China? What were you expecting from the experience and how did that measure up to reality?

Asia: I did a bit of research. I had a friend, he was black and he had worked in China a few years before I even went. I asked him about his experience. Without me even asking, he did warn me.

He said, "Just be mindful that some of the things that you might hear or see in regards to your skin color is out of pure ignorance. You might just the first person that they've ever seen close up." I said, "OK." I was like, "So what do you mean?"

He told me the story about how he was out of school and he took a drink from a cup. One of the Chinese girls walked up to him, who was a student, and said, "Teacher, your color didn't come off."

When I got there and those things happened, I was open in the beginning. When people were asking, "Oh, can I touch your hair?" It didn't bother me at first. It began to bother me though, however, when certain individuals came up and were very negative about it, and they did make comments.

I no longer was as accepting it being to close up a little bit. I was more so prepared for accidental things, not people who purposely had an issue with my skin color.

Tracy: When I was working in training school, I got involved in those management meetings. I often heard sales staff talking about how much they prefer to have white teachers. When I was allocation manager, that's what my general manager and also the sales manager basically told me very directly, because it's good for our sales.

Have you ever noticed yourself being treated differently by sales staff?

Asia: It became very clear with amongst the staff that there was a slight hints of...I'm not sure if I would say that it is racism, but I would also say that it's a bit of colorism because it's more so based on the paler you are, the farther you can go with selling to students.

The racism did come into play maybe with people watching me and not really wanting to get to know me as much maybe as teachers who were fairer skinned.

Ross: What you noticed and what you experienced in China, how is it different to maybe what you'd experienced with regards to racism in the US?

Asia: You rea...