Getting to Know Your International Contacts - Part 2

I have still been able to contact my initial international contacts.  But I am truly thankful for my newest teacher, who comes to us from a teaching assignment in Thailand.  Because the Teacher C (that is what we call her) is not full time as of yet; it is difficult to communicate with her and get resource information that will aide in some of the coursework.  More recently (within the last two weeks) we have been able to communicate a little more and she has been very insightful with providing me with some resources that she thinks I would find interesting.

The most insightful issue of equity and excellence that I have encountered in learning about Thailand and its’ people is their active involvement of racism.  Teacher C sent me an article by Coconuts Bangkok and the heading reads, “Police Crack Down on “The Colored”.  In this report, tourist police sweep the area targeting “colored people”.  They arrested 72 people and their crime was being guilty of having black skin.  In order to legitimize the arrest, the police said that they had complaints of people with black skin harassing Thai women.  Once they were detained; they were tested for drugs.  Since there was no evidence that the people of color had done anything wrong; those that tested positive for drugs were charged and those that tested negative for drugs were deported.

During many of our conversations, Teacher C has mentioned to me that the people of Thai are much more engaged with people of “white” skin.  The whiter you are the more successful you will be.  The darker your skin, the more you are out-casted.  The people of Thai, bleach their face in order to be as white as they possibly can.  They only bleach their face so when their neck or arms are exposed, they are different colors.  I find this very interesting!  Here in the US, we still struggle with issues of race between our minority and majority races.  Our minority races are people with darker skin, just as in Thailand.  But the people of our majority race, spend a lot of their time tanning in order to obtain the darker more desired skin complexion!