“The Darker Your Skin Color is, the Harder it is in Korea”: Discursive Construction of Racial Identity in Teaching Internationally

Abstract

Growing interest in international teaching programs has produced a surge of research on international language teaching (Menard-Warwick, 2008). However, there are relatively few studies on the international teaching experiences of native English-speaking teachers of color regarding their racial identity. To fill this gap, this longitudinal multi-case study explores how three non-White novice native English-speaking teachers understood their racial and teacher identities during their international teaching in Korea. With a specific focus on their racial identity, how they make sense of their teaching and living experiences is examined in diverse contexts of their social interactions. The participants' reflective and evaluative narratives from interviews were analyzed. The findings show that although their racial identity has a negative impact on their linguistic and professional identity that is denied by Korean society, the teachers utilized their own strategies for constructing a sense of belonging to the local and professional community. This study calls for a holistic, situated understanding of racial identity construction of non-White native English teachers by urging further discussion of racism in the global ELT profession. This discussion encompasses the varying, pressing needs of expatriate English teachers from diverse backgrounds.

Research on “native” and “non-native” English-speaking teachers: Past developments, current status, and future directions

“…Discrimination based on speakerhood (i.e., [non-]nativeness) is not limited to recruitment policies and practices but also traverses into the workplace and manifests itself in various ways. These other forms of discrimination include, inter alia, widespread division of labor and legitimacy (NNESTs for receptive skills and NESTs for productive skills) (Choi & Lee, 2016) and approaches to authenticity (Lowe & Pinner, 2016), institutionalized dehumanizing impositions stripping teachers of their personal/professional identity by assigning them Anglicized names and forcing them to lie about their backgrounds (Tezgiden Cakcak, 2019), microaggressions as institutionalized regimes of inequality and marginalization faced by ELT professionals of color (Lee & Jang, 2022; Ramjattan, 2019c), and being subject to less payment, more teaching loads, and professional qualifications (Lengeling & Mora-Pablo, 2012; Wong et al, 2016). Discrimination based on speakerhood is not the only axis characterizing the undemocratic and unethical employment landscape in the ELT profession.…”

“…Finally, the broader sociopolitical climate of the present-day world in which ELT professionals live and work adds to the bleakness of this picture – the pervasiveness of neoliberal ideologies, the prevalence of involuntary migration and displacement, the rise of hyper-/neo-nationalist xenophobic politics, and economic disparities and systemic inequalities/injustices exacerbated by the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, to name a few. The maintenance of national order and security through beliefs, discourses, policies, and practices of homogeneity operating at the levels of race, ethnicity, gender, and language (e.g., Lee & Jang, 2022) is not only incompatible with the multilingual and multicultural realities of today's world but also foments the ongoing waves of xenophobia, racism, intolerance, and discrimination.…”

“…It revisits, reinterprets, and reconceptualizes the (non)native speaker/teacherhood as a vital thread in the tapestry of “epistemic assemblage” of critical applied linguistics (Pennycook, 2018) – a set of (in)visibility and normativity (e.g., White normativity [Jenks, 2017], Anglonormativity [McKinney, 2017], LGBT invisibility and heteronormativity [Gray, 2013]), Islamophobia (Karmani, 2005, among others), raciolinguistic ideologies (Alim et al, 2016; Daniels & Varghese, 2020; Flores & Rosa, 2015), neoliberal and political economy (Block et al, 2012; Holborow, 2015), epistemological racism and antiracist practices (Kubota, 2020; Von Esch et al, 2020), and the dominance, construction, control, and primacy of knowledge by the Global North (Piller & Cho, 2013). This understanding acknowledges that “the ELT profession with all of its racialized and colonized ideologies becomes embodied in its teachers” (Motha, 2016, p. 219) and especially for “racially minoritized migrants” (Ramjattan, 2022) or “racial/ethnic others” (Lee & Jang, 2022). This understanding further pushes us towards focusing on the big picture (i.e., exposing ideologies and discourses that lead to structural inequalities and systemic racism) and bigger stakeholders (e.g., governments, policymakers, publishing houses, administrators, professional associations) that play an active role in the construction, confrontation, and, ultimately, transformation of these ideologies.…”