Racialised teaching of English in Asian contexts: introduction

ABSTRACT

Issues of race, racialisation, and racism have been increasingly raised in the field of applied linguistics and language education especially in the contexts of North America and other English-dominant regions. This special issue contributes to this scholarly and professional discussion by focusing on English language teaching (ELT) in Asian contexts, where ELT is aggressively promoted with the prevalence of White native-English-speakerism which is not only brought by many sojourner teachers but also endorsed by Asian learners and teachers themselves. It presents qualitative studies that critically examine how racialisation, racism, and raciolinguistic ideologies influence racially diverse teachers’ identities, desires, experiences, and resistance. This introductory article provides an overview of the topic and general themes of the articles in the special issue that illuminate contact zones between local Asian learners/teachers and sojourner teachers from diverse racial backgrounds, including Black, Asian, and bi-racial. These identities are positioned vis-à-vis Whiteness that reinforces native speakerism. The articles collectively draw our attention to intersectionality, identify challenges, and envision possible approaches for educational transformation.

KEYWORDS:

• Asia
• English language teaching
• Japan
• racism
• South Korea
• Thailand

The 2020 global pandemic of COVID-19 that first broke out in Wuhan, China intensified anti-Asian racism in many parts of the world. For instance, Levin (2021) provided recent data on anti-Asian hate crime reported in the United States. In 2020, anti-Asian hate crime rose by 146% across the 26 largest US jurisdictions which account for 10% of the nation’s population, and the surging trend continued in 2021. Levin (2021) also reported that an even steeper increase of anti-Asian hate crimes was recorded in the four largest cities in Canada between 2009 and 2020, amounting to 532%. The largest increase was 717% in Vancouver, British Columbia, where I live and work.

The increased racial attacks against not only Asians but also Black people, as exemplified by the murder of George Floyd in the United States, drew worldwide attention to racism in many segments of society. In language education and applied linguistics too, antiracism has begun to be addressed more explicitly than before. In teaching English as an additional language, TESOL Quarterly and TESOL Journal jointly released in 2020 a collection of previously published articles between 2014 and 2019 under the title, ‘Race, identity, and English language teaching’.¹ Also in 2020, the American Association for Applied Linguistics aired a webinar, ‘Race, racial justice and Indigenous language revitalization’, presented online by Uju Anya, Onowa McIvor, and Suhanthie Motha. Their papers have been published in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics.² In addition, TESOL Journal featured anti-Asian racism in English language teaching (ELT) and published a special focus section of Current Issues entitled, ‘The rise of anti-Asian discrimination and call for anti-racist pedagogy: TESOL educators respond’ in the September issue of 2021 (Vol. 12, No. 3).³

This special issue, ‘Racialized teaching of English in Asian contexts’ for Language, Culture and Curriculum, contributes to this scholarly and professional discussion on issues of race, racialisation, and racism in ELT specifically in Asian contexts. Although anti-Asian racism discussed above may seem irrelevant to teaching English in Asia, where Asians demographically constitute majority groups, problematic issues of race attached to the image of English speakers overlap with the raciolinguistic ideologies addressed in applied linguistics research conducted in North America. Indeed, intercultural encounters offered by ELT in Asian contexts are entangled with racial, cultural, and linguistic expectations and identities, influencing the lives of students and teachers inside and outside of the classroom.

This special issue presents empirical studies on teaching and learning English in Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. Thus, ‘Asia’ in the title specifically refers to these contexts. It is important to note, however, that while what is raised in this special issue would be relevant to other Asian contexts, ‘Asia’ covers a large geographical region and the definition of what constitutes ‘Asia’ is not fixed. Moreover, ‘Asia’, however defined, is not monolithic with regard to the racial and ethnic diversity of people. Thus, while many of the issues raised in this special issue may be relevant to other Asian contexts, more research is needed to uncover how race influences the discourses and practices of ELT.

Racialised teaching of English in Asia

Anti-Asian racism that has surfaced since 2020 in North America is a product of the underlying historical marginalisation and degradation of Asians as the racialised Other since the beginning of Asian migration to North America in the nineteenth century. This historical continuity in both Canada and the United States is seen in the prohibition of Chinese immigration at the turn of the twentieth century, the internment of people from Japanese descent during World War II, and more (Stanley, 2009; Takaki, 1990). The current anti-Asian racism is not disconnected with this historical antagonism against Asians, which positions them as inferior to the White race. This racial inferiorisation is also linked to language. Lee (2021), a Chinese Canadian teacher educator and an L1 speaker of English, recounted a disturbing comment she received from a White man at a gym, ‘I like talking to you because you don’t have an accent’ (p. 618). Implied here is not only his aversion to Asian people with accents but also an assumption that Asian-looking people are usually not English speakers or that they speak with an accent. This parallels childhood recollections shared by some L1 English-speaking Canadian-born university students of Chinese heritage who attempted to linguistically fit into the White dominant Canadian society so that they would not be mistaken for immigrants from China (Kubota et al., 2021). These examples demonstrate raciolinguistic essentialism – a fixed idea indicating which racial group is deemed legitimate speakers of a language. This raciolinguistic essentialism gives White speakers of English a status of privilege. Scholars problematise this ideology especially observed in the context of American schools, where Latinx and Black students are positioned as linguistically deviant because of their race by White listeners (Flores & Rosa, 2015). This phenomenon has also been uncovered by experimental studies conducted in US universities, in which students were asked to assess the quality of a lecture given in standardised English in two conditions: one with an image of an Asian instructor and another with an image of a White instructor. It was found that perceived race influenced the students’ assessment of the quality of the speech and the instructor in favour of the White instructor (Kang & Rubin, 2009; Rubin, 1992).

The raciolinguistic essentialism of English is not only a problem in North America but it infiltrates Asia and beyond. The presumption that speakers of English are White people pervades public consciousness and influences the teaching of English as a foreign language, as seen in the preference of hiring White L1 English-speaking teachers in Asian contexts (Hickey, 2018; Jenks, 2017; Ruecker & Ives, 2015; Stanley, 2013). Furthermore, desire for White speakers of English is gendered and sexualised. Research has exposed how some Japanese female learners of English pursue romantic desires for White L1 English-speaking men (Takahashi, 2013) and how the ELT industry in Japan reproduces the masculinity and heterosexuality of White male L1 teachers of English, leading them to perform this identity or experience exclusion (Appleby, 2014).

Raciolinguistic essentialism persists in the current neoliberal promotion of teaching and learning English, a language perceived to be globally superior for bolstering internationalisation and human capital development that would bring economic benefits (Kubota, 2019; Park, 2011; Phillipson, 2009; Shin, 2016). The superiority of English also signifies a legacy of British and American colonialism (Pennycook, 1998; Tupas, 2019), implying that the superiority of English in foreign language education does not solely reflect the linguistic hegemony of English but also the superiority of a particular kind of English speakers. These privileged English speakers are ideologically characterised by native speakerism and Whiteness.

While raciolinguistic ideologies and essentialism are increasingly problematised in North American contexts particularly in response to the recent antiracist social movements, issues of race, racialisation, and racism in teaching and learning English as a foreign language in Asia are still under-addressed. This limitation is consistent with the scarcity of antiracist public discourse or antiracist street demonstrations unlike other parts of the world. Given the fact that ELT is a prevalent educational activity in Asia and that ELT inherently contains raciolinguistic ideologies, the impact of racialisation and racism in English language teaching and learning in Asian contexts need to be examined and uncovered. This would facilitate the construction of a discourse promoting raciolinguistic justice in language education.

About this special issue

In this special issue, authors address interconnected themes on race and intersectional identities related to English language teaching and learning in Japan, South Korea, and Thailand. The studies illuminate contact zones between local Asian learners/teachers and sojourner teachers from diverse racial backgrounds, including Black, Asian, and bi-racial. Such diverse racial identities are positioned vis-à-vis Whiteness, a racial category that reinforces native speakerism.

Two of the four articles focus on the experiences of racialised L1 English-speaking teachers from the United States. The article by Yuya Takeda reveals the conflicting experiences of an Asian American female JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) teacher of English in Japan, whose Asian appearance lacked the perceived foreignness expected for an English language teacher and simultaneously induced a gendered expectation to behave like a Japanese woman. The article by Youngjoo Seo and Ryuko Kubota focuses also on racialised female teachers of English, but they are Black American EPIK (English Program in Korea) participants and YouTubers in South Korea. Their online accounts uncovered both privilege and marginality. While they took pride in the role of Black American ambassadors who could enlighten local people, they felt frustrated by being Othered though not in the same way as they were treated in the United States. The raciolinguistic struggles experienced by these sojourner teachers in Japan or South Korea were caused by their non-White positionality despite being L1 English speakers.

The study by Young-Eun Lee and Cheri Chan was also conducted in South Korea but examines the multilayered relations of power that are exposed when the experiences of a female Korean L2 teacher of English are contrasted with those of a male White-passing mixed-race American L1 teacher at a university. Their interview accounts elucidate how the privilege given to Whiteness, native speakerness, and maleness differentially shapes the institutional statuses and experiences of these two professionals.

Shifting the focus to Thailand, Natakorn Satienchayakorn and Rachel Grant engaged in collaborative autoethnography by reflecting on their own racialised experiences as an ethnic minority male graduate student and an African American female guest professor of a summer seminar which aimed to raise students’ critical awareness in ELT. Their narratives are interwoven to illustrate their renewed awareness of being, for Satienchayakorn, an ethnic minority in his homeland and, for Grant, a racialised teacher educator in a foreign land.

All in all, these studies demonstrate that the historically constructed meanings of racial identities in North America (e.g. Asians as perpetual foreigners; Blacks as sufferers of slavery and continuous oppression; mixed race as an identity accepted by society) are not necessarily shared in the same way in these Asian contexts, even though the hegemony of Whiteness and native speakerism prevails. Moreover, the hegemonic power of Whiteness may be more directly linked to a desire for a white skin tone, because a fair skin colour implicitly evokes White people of European origin. L1 English teachers’ shift in racial positionings – e.g. an Asian American teacher blended into Japaneseness; African American teachers mistaken for Black Africans; a mixed-race American teacher forced to identify only as White – seems to be influenced by the discourses of race in local societies that are not identical with the ones in the anglophone West despite the shared existence of White native speakerism.

While such specific conceptualisations of racial difference often stem from the relatively monoracial/monoethnic characteristics of many local Asian societies, racial/ethnic diversity as well as other kinds of human differences – gender, social class, sexuality, and so on – certainly exist in Asian contexts. This indicates the importance of taking into consideration racial/ethnic diversity as well as intersectionality in understanding the complexities of racialised experiences in ELT in Asian contacts.

In addition to the four empirical studies, this special issue presents three book reviews. The books reviewed are among a few published to date to address issues of race and ethnicity in language education within Asian contexts. These reviews complement our scholarly knowledge and discussion.

Moving forward

Race and intersectional categories in ELT in Asia and beyond influence the identities of teachers and learners of English, learners’ world view, and educational practices. The hegemony of Whiteness attached to English and English speakers constructs a raciolinguistic hierarchy in the consciousness of the learners and teachers of English as well as educational stakeholders in Asia. An uncritical acceptance of the hierarchy would lead to Asian learners’ self-subordination to White speakers of English or the denigration of English speakers of colour. We must continue to address raciolinguistic relations of power and implement more racially and linguistically just approaches to ELT.

Finally, the idea of this special issue was actually developed before the coronavirus pandemic by a group of emergent scholars from Asian backgrounds who shared a sense of urgency to address the impact of race on English language education. During our journey, painful challenges were imposed on some of the racialised and gendered members. Behind what is presented in this special issue lie institutional and societal challenges imposed especially on women scholars from Asian background and a dire need to establish greater racial and gender justice for Asian scholars.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1002/(ISSN)1234-5678.race-identity-and-english-language-teaching

2 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/annual-review-of-applied-linguistics

3 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/19493533/2021/12/3