The tone of this debate gets very personal and biased, and that’s very understandable. But viciously lambasting so-called “Chinese ignorance” is not entirely fair. First of all, there is a wide range of belief and opinion among the people of Taiwan. It’s as easy to say that American society is RACIST, against blacks and Hispanics and Asians and Arabs, as to wholly define Chinese society as racist. It is also ignorant to declare that the prejudices being encountered are MAKING you “hate.” There’s a certain amount of free agency here, and it’s not impossible to be the bigger person and get over it.

Secondly, there is a justifiable uncertainty as to the fluency in English of persons not obviously of “foreign” descent. Buxibans as a business are not bound by the same policies of equal hiring practices, which by and large don’t really exist in Taiwan, largely due to the primarily homogenous population. It’s not a public education, it’s a business. Abercrombie and Fitch won’t hire Asians or persons of color because their image is clean-cut white folk. Can I then assume that America is RACIST and the country is lousy?

My overall point, I suppose, is that in discussing this, the rhetoric gets overblown and overly personal. This is a societal issue, not a chip on a shoulder because of a lost job opportunity. Crying victimization isn’t effective, especially if we’re going to trash on persons like Ron who are at least making a bit of effort.

It gets annoying sometimes, but I have no problems finding the jobs I want and the students I want.

First, consider the diversity of accents that exists within North American. There are some North American accents that are very non-standard*, just as there are some Irish ones. Would you employ any old North American even if they did have a particularly non-standard accent?

My next point is that if students have trouble understanding the small difference in accent between you and your boss then they are not really learning effective English communication. Once outside the classroom they can expect to encounter English speakers whose accents differ markedly. Another point is that students will often find themselves speaking with other non-native English speakers. Does this narrow focus on accent prepare them at all for this?

Lastly despite the differences between British and American English they share far much more in common. If a school wishes to teach a certain form of English then it is good to be consistent and this is probably reasonably important when teaching children. If a school asked me to teach only American spelling and grammar I would have no problem with that. Although I would expect the school to be aware that I may not be familiar with some of the finer points of American grammar and idiom.

* Defining standard and non-standard accents is fraught with difficulty. A good test is that the speaker should be easily understood by another native-speaker.

I wonder if you’re taking too much of an American view of Taiwan. Taiwan is not an open society that simply invites any old-person to come to Taiwan. That is very much an American ideal (which isn’t achieved anyways since it’s much harder to and has always be much harder for Asians to immigrate to the US). The real racism in Taiwan is mainly directed at those, that from a world-wide perspective, dominated by Western hegemony for the last hundred years, has put blacks and Asians lower on the social ladder. From the Taiwanese perspective, blacks are associated either with Africa or from Hollywood movies, the poor or the criminal. Southeast Asians or Mainland Chinese are then lower on the social scale too because that’s where all their labor comes from. Whites are up because 1) Western countries are generally fairly wealthy and more important, wealthier than the average Taiwanese person 2) that’s how Hollywood portrays them.

Think about this–you don’t speak the language here well, you don’t necessarily have the right background in the culture, you don’t have a network of locals here built up from when you were young and by extension through relatives–so purely on the basis of being able to speak English and some technical skills, what makes you a better manager than locals? Think about how Asian immigrants of a few years are treated in the US.

I think what you want to do is admirable; live in a foreign society that you previously had no connection with, and in a way that is not just at a distance. You seem to want to learn local language and culture. Well, I give you props and I hope you are recognized for your merits. But you have no right and should have no expectation that this will be easy or handed over to you on a silver platter. It already is fairly easy in comparison to many other places, and in Taiwan, it is unlikely you will experience violence or outright racism if you are white. This is something non-white immigrants to the US have to think about all the time–if you make the proper comparison, you’ll realize that you’re really extremely lucky.