Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Yu_Bum_suk]

I'm always surprised by how black automatically equals ugly. When working on descriptions with my students I could show them a photo of the hottest looking black woman and when I ask 'is she pretty or ugly?' I always get 'ugly!!!'.

I think we'd probably get further with adults. When the topic of black people comes up I always say things like 'I lived in the US for a few years and most black people are really quite nice - nicer than white Americans on average' or 'I worked as a TA at an American university and the best student I ever had was a black guy' (which is true).

With students if I get negative comments about blacks I just say 'oh that's not true' and move on. If it's about Japanese I just play along with it - 'really, Japanese eat babies?' and then say 'actually younger Japanese people really don't care about Dokdo or anything like that'.

[krats1976]

I have a good friend from South Africa who, after 5 years in Korea, tells people she's from England. She got tired of people asking why she wasn't black. She'd explain it and then they'd ask, "Was your husband black?" She'd say no, he was white. So then they'd ask, "Are your kids black?"


I don't have the race issue come up so much now because my students are pretty westernized, and most have lived overseas for a couple of years or more. But when I worked at the hagwon, I taught a class of pretty advanced grade 1 (elementary) students using an American social studies book. One day, a student pointed at a picture of African-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks and said, "Ew dirty!" I resisted my initial impusle to smack the kid upside the head and instead asked, "Why is she dirty?" This little 1st grader then explained to me that because her skin was so dark, she looked dirty. So, I (being the ever-so-sensitive teacher that I am) put my winter pale arm next to hers and said, "I'm lighter than you. Are you dirty?" She burst out in tears and wailed, "Noooo, I'm not dirty!!"

I waited till the next day to explain (she was too upset to take anything in at that moment). I brought in a photo album from my student teaching at a school in Washington, DC. I showed them pictures of my two classes of 12th graders where the racial breakdown was: 46 African-American, 3 Asian-American and 1 Hispanic and explained that all of these students were all very high-level students who were now attending university.

Also in the album was a picture of a Navajo friend of mine. One of the little boys said, "Oh, I don't like Indians." I asked why and he mimed a feather headdress and did his best Hollywood war whoop/dance. I told him that my friend didn't have a headdress and never acted like that. He wore the same kinds of clothes as everyone else and lived in the same kind of house and so on.

OK, so now I'm rambling a bit. The point of the story was that I had the chance to talk to my students about race and how even though we look different on the outside, we're all pretty much the same. I mean, they're little kids and all they know is what they hear at home. So, I was actually kind of happy that it came up so we could talk a bit about it. I don't know if it sunk in, but I think it might have a little.

[Yu_Bum_suk]

Another thing I did was to do one of my first lessons on discrimination. For the listening excercise we did MLK's I have a Dream speech and I went over the history of desegregation in the US; then I went over the history of discrimination in Korea under Japanese occupation. I think it was really good for them to see the connections and similarities.

[Sofa_King]

What I do to try and prevent racism is I have a speaking class about a blue haired guy. I found this lesson out of an old conversation book and kept it. I hand out a piece of paper to the class with the following:

A BLUE HAIR GUY

A person with spiked blue hair and a piercing in their nose might be a psycho; but they also might not be. How do you know? Can you tell just by looking at someone that they might be crazy? It can be possible, but there are many normal people who want to dye their hair and get body piercings. Don't you think it's a little too fast to judge someone's personality just by the way they look on the outside?

Then, I tell them about a friend I had that has a bald, waxed head, many tattoos and stretched earlobes. He looks scary, and I usually exaggerate his appearance to make him look evil. Then I tell my students that he is a computer programmer and that he has a great job and makes a lot of money.

After, I ask the students questions. The questions are:

1) What does 'judge a person' mean?
2) Do you ever judge a person by external appearances? Why or why not?
3) What do you think are some strange ways to dress?
4) What do you think are normal clothes to wear?
5) Do you wear any clothes that someone else might think is weird?
6) What is a weird hairstyle?
7) What do you think about people with tattoos and body piercings?
8. Talk about a time you saw a strange person, and what you thought of them?
9) "You should never judge a book by its cover." What does this mean?
10) Do you have any friends now, that you didn't like at first? What happened?
11) Are people who dress weird, really weird people? How do you know?
12) What is prejudice? What is racism?

Then after all this, I bring up past racist comments that were made in the class. After that, I judge their reaction to those comments. If they are regretful, then I end it at that.

If they laugh at the comments that were made, I ask them how would they feel if they were walking down the street in America and people started laughing at them because of the way the looked? I try to make them feel really shameful for what they say. Then, I tell them that if I hear any racist comments, I will kick them out of my class. Afterwards, if there is a racist comment, I yell at them and kick them out.

[SPINOZA]

Aside from anti-Americanism (black or white presumably) and anti-Japanese jingoism, I can't recall coming across racism in school from kids. Then again, I avoid serious issues like the plague. North Korea, dog meat, equality - I can't be bothered with any of it, I'm afraid. They'll have to learn that in other classes or by themselves, not with me. The reason? It's difficult and boring for them and, frankly, for me too.

However, a co-teacher once used the 'n' word when we were discussing Katrina. The strange thing is, he was making an anti-racist point, yet used the 'n' word. He used it once, hesitated, and used 'blacks' from then on. This guy's a liberal, educated Korean who's extremely knowledgeable about world affairs and is not, I know this, a racist, yet bizarrely used that word.

Another occasion: A PE teacher at my school takes me on cool trips sometimes with his son, whose English is excellent and relishes the practise. He's a smart kid who has told me he dislikes discrimination of any kind. We were talking about Itaewon and he said "there are a lot of [insert n-word in the plural] in Itaewon".

I don't think Koreans realize how morally reprehensible that word is in the West. Actually, perhaps someone ought to teach them. They're also not used to foreigners of any kind really, so add that to a few cliches about black people and sadly you've all the makings of a people that think nothing of using offensive language even if they're not racist.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[keithinkorea]

Racism is all based on ignorance and Koreans generally don't travel much. They've met very few people from other countries and a lot of what they hear is very ethnocentric.

Every Korean is not the same however, I've met people who know a great deal about other countries. Some of the students from better off families have travelled to Bali and the Philppines and reported they had a great time and the people were very friendly.

I've seen Korean textbooks that have hideous caricatures of Black people. Koreans often respect Indians however due to many Indians' tech skills.

I had a student freak out today as I pointed out her favourite pen was made in Japan. I think it is terrible how some students are taught to be racist. I think that we shouldn't go over the top and preach at them but as educators it is our job to make them better people by at least making them question their opinions.

All Koreans are not the same.

[stumptown]

[Privateer]

[simone]

[Wrench]

[doublejeopardy]

[Merlyn]

[Merlyn]

[guangho]

I put up a picture of my girlfriend on the white board and explained how I'm very sensitive to these things and if they pull this c*ap one more time, they will fail.
It's better to be feared than loved.