During my interview, the representative expressed concern of how I will be treated as an African-American in such a rural part of Korea.
I encouraged him that I would be the perfect person to bring transparency to media stereotypes of Black peoples in general.
While my confidence hasn’t faltered, it’s just great to hear the experiences of people who have already been in the situation.

However, I will assume that rural Korea is, like most places, less acceptin of change and difference. Have either of you ever taught or lived in rural areas of Korea?
Do you have any tips for a fairly inexperienced English teacher?

Thanks for the Podcast!

and this part made me double take –

Korean school kids:
“We’ve never seen a black person say anything intelligent before.”

Huh? Weren’t you standing in front of the class teaching them history? I guess they had become comfortable with you just as their teacher, and the big deal was seeing an intelligent, black stranger on a video.

Thanks for the hard work, and special thanks to Felicia for contributing as a guest.

But…who is this hair-dresser that you talk up? How can I find him?

Thanks!

However, it is quite interesting that kind of disgusting racial prejudice is quite much spread. I met an African-English engineer living in Doha, Qatar. He was with Qtel which is that largest telephone company in Qatar. He used to work for British Telecom and was very smart guy. One day, he told me that he could not make decisions officially in his organization while his position is a ‘manager’. I asked “What?” and he explained that he could not do something other caucasina managers in the company could do just because he was black. I said it was ridiculous and he said ‘yes, but it was the reality he faced in Middle East’. Then, I paid some attention and figured out the racism in rich Arabic countries are quite widely spread. In Qatar and Kuwait, there are several grades in the people living there. First one are, of course, local(Their own citizens.) plus caucasians especially from western countries. The second grade are Arabics from those countries that do not produce oil and well educated Asians.(Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Malaysia, etc) Third is the rest, and the majority, of poor immigrants from India and South Eastern countries. I even watched those people being abused by locals by myself.

I believe that a lot of Koreans look down immigrant workers from South Eastern countries in that context. A lot of them work in a very tough environment, often being abused phisically and verbally.

We really should think about the others in the context of ‘what if I were that person?’.